Innovations in technology come all the time, and companies are continually working to improve their technology to take the lead in the marketplace. Each year, something new is introduced that changes the game, and when there’s something truly special, the world of technology is changed forever.

See Also: 10 ‘Green’ Products That Are Bad For The Environment

In the years between 2010 and 2019, there were tons of impressive gadgets, innovations to existing technologies, and inventions that captivated the marketplace. Some even went on to influence pop culture and establish itself in the zeitgeist. These ten gadgets were the most innovative of the decade, ordered from beginning to end.

10 2010: Instant Pot

Even if you don’t have an Instant Pot of your own, odds are, you have a friend or coworker who won’t stop telling you how great theirs is. The Instant Pot was released in 2010, and while it may seem like any old pressure cooker, it’s far more, and its capabilities are vast. The multifunction cooker was created by Robert Wang, a computer scientist who put up $350,000 of his savings to bring his dream to reality. The Instant Pot was an immediate success, and thanks to the word-of-mouth from food bloggers, and the ease of selling via Amazon, it quickly became one of the hottest products of the year.

Instant Pots work like slow cookers, but they can also be used to steam rice, boil dozens of eggs, cook meats, bake a cheesecake, make oatmeal, and a thousand other things you’d never expect a pressure cooker would be capable of doing. There are thousands of recipes and cookbooks available for these things, and because most only require that you dump the ingredients in and walk away, Instant Pots are taking over where conventional slow cookers and pressure cookers were years before. They tend to go on sale every so often, and now that Wang has partnered with Corelle, the gadget is going to be around for a long time.

9 2011: Nest Learning Thermostat

The Nest Learning Thermostat was introduced as one of the most innovative new thermostats ever made, and it sold like crazy. The thermostat has many of the same features now standard in other models, but in 2011, it was unheard of to have a thermostat capable of machine learning. The device is connected to the internet through a wi-fi connection, and via an algorithm, it manages to track a person’s preferences in terms of how cool or hot they like their environment. It couples this data with information related to when people are in the home, and through this, it creates a schedule designed to maximize performance, and limit energy costs by reducing the need to cool a home when nobody is present.

As of the end of the decade, six models have been introduced, all of which built upon the base model released in 2011. The Nest performed so well, it was eventually purchased by Google in January of 2014 for $3.2 billion in cash. Since then, it has been operated independently from Google’s other businesses, and the line has grown to include other smart home gadgets, including cameras, alarm systems, smoke detectors, and many other successful products.

82012: Tesla Model S

In 2012, Tesla introduced the Model S, and while it wasn’t the first electric car, it changed the way the world thought about them. Technically, the first electric vehicle was made back in the early 19th-century, but the technology was overshadowed by the rise of the internal combustion engine. Elon Musk is hoping to change that, and his line of electric vehicles, first introduced in 2009, started him on the road to becoming a car manufacturer. With the Model S’ release in 2012, the world was given a car that was a viable replacement of their standard, gas-guzzling automobiles, and the future of electric vehicles was given a solid base.

Since the Model S’ 2012 model ended up succeeding for the company, Musk has been able to continue to refine the manufacturing process, and eventually, he released additional models of cars. The 2012 Model S debuted at a whopping $75,000, which was out of the price range for most consumers, but the success of that model helped bring about the Model 3, which is far more affordable. As the technology continues to develop, costs will go down, and more people will be driving Teslas and other electric cars, thanks to the success of the 2012 Tesla Model S.

7 2013: Sony Playstation 4

The eighth-generation of consoles began in 2012 with the Wii U, but unlike its predecessor, that console failed to achieve much success, and it wasn’t until the following year that the real console competition kicked off. The PlayStation 4 (PS4) hit store shelves in November 2013, and while it was followed by the XBox One (XB1) less than two weeks later, the PS4 managed to take an impressive lead in the ongoing console war between Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. The PS4 was developed with graphics and gamers in mind, while the XB1 was designed to be a full-functioning multimedia player, which didn’t capture as many gamers as the impressive graphics and sound found on the PS4.

The console was widely acclaimed, and the differences between Sony and Microsoft’s products were significant and noticeable. The console sold remarkably well, and by September 2019, Sony had managed to sell more than 102 million PS4 consoles across the globe. The console continues to dominate the marketplace, even as Sony and its competitors are actively working on a ninth-generation replacement. In terms of total sales, the PS4 is only outmatched by the PS2, Nintendo DS, and Game Boy, which makes it the second-best-selling home console (non-handheld) of all time behind another Sony product.

6 2014: Amazon Echo

Before 2014, when people talked aloud while alone in a room, it usually meant there was something wrong with them, but that all changed when Amazon released the Echo, a smart speaker that worked much like the computer on the Starship Enterprise. The speaker wasn’t just a Bluetooth device capable of playing your favorite music; it was able to respond to vocal cues, making it a completely hands-free device. If you want to listen to The Beatles, all you had to do was say, “Alexa, play The Beatles,” and you would be singing along with John, Paul, George, and Ringo in a matter of seconds.

By the close of the decade, the Amazon Echo, and its competition from Google and other companies, is ubiquitous. Many homes feature more than one device, and it has advanced to work with phones, in cars, wall clocks, microwaves, and just about anything you never thought you needed or even wanted to be automated. The devices have had some privacy issues, but despite this, Amazon sells Echo devices consistently. In December 2019, the company offered the ability to have Samuel L. Jackson’s voice featured on the device, and he’s likely the first of many celebrity voices to come int he future.

5 2015: JUUL

Though it’s taken a severe hit in 2019 due to the medical scare of vaping coupled with the accusations of marketing the product to teenagers, the JUUL was a revolutionary device when it was released in 2015. Before the JUUL, e-cigarettes were large, complicated, and hard to use. The JUUL is simple, easy to use, fits in your pocket, and can be adapted to include pods featuring mint and fruit-flavored liquids, making it a rival to traditional combustible cigarettes. JUUL was a product that changed an industry, and whatever a person’s thoughts on that industry may be, it represented a significant advancement.

The JUUL’s value on the marketplace was estimated at nearly $24 billion in 2019, and despite the ongoing issues in 2019, the company will likely continue to succeed in the marketplace. JUUL’s mission is “to provide the world’s one billion adult smokers with a true alternative to combustible cigarettes,” and there’s no denying that’s exactly what JUUL did when it was released in 2015. The company has vowed to fight the issues related to youth smoking in regards to its products and is likely to be around for a long time.

4 2016: Apple Airpods

Apple has always been about innovation, and while the company has spent the better part of two decades working to revolutionize the cellphone and tablet markets, that doesn’t mean it isn’t also focused on peripheral devices. In 2016, Apple announced that the iPhone 7 was losing its headphone jack, a feature of cellphones for decades and that its users wouldn’t need it any longer. The company announced Apple AIrpods on the same day, and there’s little wonder why. Apple Airpods weren’t just a new type of headphones; they were the only headphones Apple wanted its customers to buy.

Apple Airpods are entirely wireless, and while some mocked the concept of separating the left and right earpiece for fear of losing one, they proved immensely popular among consumers. The sound quality on them is superior to many comparable models. Advancements have been made since 2016, and subsequent models feature noise cancellation, a more comfortable in-ear fit, and wireless charging. One again, Apple revolutionized the marketplace, and the company did it with a product that has been around for decades in one form or another.

3 2017: Nintendo Switch

Nintendo has been an innovative company for most of its existence. After all, it initially made playing cards in the 19th-century but went on to save the video game industry in the 1980s. Since that time, the company has attempted numerous advancements in technology and play-style with products that flopped—the Power Glove—and products that dominated the industry, such as the Wii. The successor to that console failed miserably, but the one that came after, the Nintendo Switch, once more took a hold in the marketplace with new technology and a product the fans immediately embraced.

The Nintendo Switch is unlike any console that came before it. It isn’t just a home console like all the Nintendo home products that came before it; it’s portable. Players can lift it out of its docking cradle and seamlessly continue playing their game on the road. They can swap out controllers, drop it in another console anywhere int he world, and continue playing. It also features multimedia playback and isn’t limited to family-friendly games like most Nintendo consoles. The Nintendo Switch’s game library includes most of the AAA titles released on the PS4 and XB1.

2 2018: Mars Translation Earbuds

Apple innovated the marketplace in 2016 with the Apple Airpods, but that was just the beginning of wireless earbuds, and the technology has only advanced since that time. Mars Translation Earbuds are exactly what the name implies, and while there have been attempts to create earbuds capable of translating the spoken language instantly, those results were less than extraordinary. These new devices work almost perfectly, as they can take in someone’s speech, and instantly translate it into a person’s ear, but that’s not all they can do.

You can separate them, and hand one of the earbuds over to the person you’re communicating with. So, if you approach someone who only speaks Russian while you can only speak English, just hand one over, and they will hear your words in their native tongue while you will hear theirs in yours. The technology does need some tweaks and improvements, but they are definitely a game-changer for anyone who travels for business, diplomats who need to communicate for their job, and even members of the military working in foreign countries.

1 2019: Oculus Quest

Virtual Reality gaming has been slowly creeping into the marketplace since the 1980s, and it’s been a rough ride. The technology wasn’t capable of supporting many experiences until the development of products like the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, but those headsets are somewhat bulky and require a powerful PC to run. The need to pair the Rift and other headsets with a powerful computer meant a player needed to spend thousands of dollars to play anything of value, and that made it difficult for the products to take up more than a niche in the video game marketplace. Fortunately, everything changed with the release of the Oculus Quest.

The Quest wasn’t the second or even the third headset released by Oculus, but it was the first that didn’t require a computer, needed no cables, and could run pretty much every piece of VR software on the market. The ability to take VR anywhere you wanted to go without the need to place barrier equipment or plug it into a computer changed the world of virtual reality forever. This impressive portable technology will only be improved upon in the future, so expect more advanced, lighter, smaller, and better compact VR gear in the future.

We expect a leading organization in the international space race to develop insane tech, spearhead invaluable innovation, and come up with solutions to problems so far above the mental capacity of us mere mortals we might fail to comprehend. However, sharing technology is not everyone’s business. Naturally, NASA also has to solve everyday problems that we take for granted here on Earth, made more complicated by the absence of oxygen and gravity or the dangers of temperatures far below freezing.

Luckily for us, NASA is quite generous in how they share their inventions, which makes it possible for us to use them to better our own lives in the process. Here are ten innovation spinoffs developed by NASA that changed many lives here on Earth

Related: Ten Most Expensive NASA Programs

10 Breast Cancer Detection

Working in space has many downsides. One of which is exposure to radiation. It was found that astronauts working on the International Space Station (ISS) were exposed to radiation equal to as many as 1,000 chest X-rays.

Although we are constantly exposed to various levels of radiation here on Earth, radiation in large quantities can be quite cancerous. Intensive preventative care and detection technology were therefore required to prevent their colleagues from developing terrible life-threatening cancers. NASA invested in research to study how sections of DNA can measure a person’s radiation exposure and assess the damage.

The BioScan System has been proven to be able to scan, find, and confirm the presence of cancer in the breasts by detecting the cancerous cells’ ability to recruit an alternative blood supply—a clear red flag of malignant lesions.^[1]

9 Safety Grooving Highways

Hydroplaning during rainstorms is a condition that causes the tires of a car rolling or sliding along the slippery road to be lifted away from the surface due to water pressure. This leads to a loss of control of the vehicle and is considered the main reason uncontrolled skidding happens during inclement weather.

As you can imagine, hydroplaning is a terrible thing to happen to a spacecraft returning to Earth at insane speeds, so NASA jumped to task. In the early ’60s, safety grooves in the runway were proposed, which would channel the water off the surface, providing better traction.

It wasn’t long before the innovation was used to improve the roads Americans travel on every day, leading to a reduction in almost 85% of wet-weather accidents since the implementation of the grooves.^[2]

8 Apollo-Era Life Rafts

Space travel has become more sophisticated over recent years, with shuttles landing on Earth in one piece, with designated runways. But there was a time when it wasn’t as easy, and pods would find themselves deep in the ocean in a maneuver called a splashdown.

NASA teamed up with a man named Jim Givens, who was working on a similar invention, something that would keep the astronauts afloat while the search for them in the vast ocean continued. The collaboration developed an inflatable raft system that could be deployed once they hit the water.

The Givens Raft has been adapted for commercial use and, after many years of use and adaptations, has saved upward of 450 lives that would have been claimed by the sea.^[3]

7 Airplane Winglets

When a fuel crisis in the 1970s threatened global air travel, the entire industry almost collapsed. Adversity breeds opportunity, so a band of NASA engineers and scientists came together to explore new fuel-saving technologies.

The Aircraft Efficiency Program was a 10-year program to develop various aeronautical technologies in the hopes of making future craft up to 50% more fuel efficient. It was to be completed by 1985 but was extended.

In partnership with Boeing, they initiated a winglet flight test based on the findings of Richard Whitcomb and proved a 7% increase in lift-drag ratio with a 20% decrease in induced drag. This finding led to an overall reduction in fuel consumption and millions in fuel savings since the winglets were introduced.^[4]

6 Implantable Cardiac Defibrillator

The first Implantable Cardiac Defibrillator was developed by Dr. Michel Mirowski, a cardiologist at the Johns Hopkins School for Medicine. It was implanted by Dr. Levi Watkings of the same institute.

But the life-saving technology we know today is derived from NASA’s space circuitry technology and can prevent erratic heart action known as arrhythmias. The implanted unit consists of a microcomputer power source and two heart sensors that can deliver corrective electrical shocks in the event of an irregular heartbeat.

The discovery of polymers also made it possible to implant pacemakers in complicated cases of congestive heart failure, and it all started with an attempt to build a passenger jet that could break the sound barrier.^[5]

5 Invisible Braces

Some of us are lucky enough to have avoided those uncomfortable wire tracks that slowly pull our teeth together like some contraption from the Stone Age. Still, many people around the world will have to adorn braces at some stage in their lives.

Up until the late ’80s, braces were made from a very noticeable metal that held your teeth together. Sometimes, they added colorful rubber bands for some flash. NASA, in conjunction with others, invented translucent ceramics that became a popular component in “invisible braces,” which went on to be a bestseller in the world of orthodontics.

It’s not the only way NASA has influenced the world of orthodontics, with the use of alloy, ultrasound, and X-rays to detect and improve overall dental health.^[6]

4 Smoke Detectors

Although smoke detectors have been around for a while, it wasn’t until the 1960s that they were adjusted and made available for home use. The device was cheap, easy to install, widely used, and frustrating as heck. Legislation made it compulsory, but the frustrating part was that false alarms became a common thing.

Around the time smoke detectors became a household item, NASA was busy finding ways to prevent false alarms in Skylab and other space labs. So they, working with Honeywell Corporation, set out to invent a new technology that was sensitive to differences in smoke and other fumes. They also fashioned the detector into a handy plastic unit that could be adjusted according to needs.

The smoke detector has saved thousands of lives since its invention (not to mention reducing the cost of false alarm callouts), with the adjustable smoke detector likely preventing many people from going insane.^[7]

3 Cell Phone Camera

When you dip your chin, tilt your shoulder, and bend one of your legs ninety degrees for your next selfie, hold out a thought for NASA as they contributed to the development of the cell phone camera.

NASA did not develop the cell phone camera, but what they contributed was key technology that helped with its creation. Active pixel sensors are a key element in digital imagery, which NASA developed for space travel. This tech, in turn, gave rise to what’s known as complementary metal oxide semiconductor image sensors (CMOS).

CMOS image sensors originated from NASA’s desire to create fast, cheap spacecraft but also led to the development of charge-coupled devices, which allowed for high-quality digital photos by the late 1980s. Eric Fossum further pushed for even smaller and lighter machinery using the CMOS tech to create active pixel sensors. Say cheese!^[8]

2 Tracking Systems

Initially used on low-orbiting satellites and distant geostationary satellites, the cross-use of tracking technology has come a long way.

Since the 1970s, NASA has provided aid and expertise to the Cospas-Sarsat program, which is an international satellite-aided search and rescue effort. By utilizing the Search and Rescue System Satellite Aided Tracking System (SARSAT), multiple search and rescue type beacons have been developed (for example, the current 406 Beacon), enabling explorers to venture on land, air, and sea with a sense of security not previously known.

It is estimated that over 50,000 people worldwide in life-threatening situations, have been rescued by the inventions of the SARSAT beacons.^[9]

1 Plant Texting

If you do not already have enough notifications on your phone, it might soon be possible to receive texts from your thirsty plants demanding water.

BioServe Space Technologies, a company sponsored by NASA, has developed a leaf sensor of sorts that can detect whether your plants require water using electrical pulses. The world was quick to realize its agricultural benefits, and massive funding has subsequently led to amazing advancements in the field.

For those who do not have the greenest of fingers, it is quite possible that in the near future, your plant can be fitted with a custom device to alert you to low water levels. We will leave it to you to decide whether you want the thought of your plant dying of thirst while you are away hanging over your head.^[10]

There is a lot of need in the world, but a lot gets in the way of filling it — even for those with the best intentions. The following 10 charities have found some enterprising ways to do good, without their efforts being devoured by operating costs, diluted by bureaucratic corruption or lost in the all the noise. You will also find links to the charitable organizations, should you wish to contribute to their efforts.

Charity’s version of Menudo, the Oaktree Foundation is an aid and development organization run exclusively by young people under the age of 26. Listed achievements from a website littered with bad spelling include a 2006 Make Poverty History Concert (with Eddie Vedder and, of course, Bono), an End Child Slavery campaign and Schools 4 Schools, an Australian school program raising awareness of global poverty. Oaktree also supports the Adidome Modular Training program in Ghana, which combats Trokosi religious practices of surrendering young girls to shrines as reparations for supposed ‘crimes’ committed by family members (many of these girls remain imprisoned for life). [Charity Website]

Community Voice Mail provides free voice messaging services for the poor or homeless throughout the United States. You and I may snicker at the dated mention of “voice mail”, but to “those whose street address is the license plate of their car, a simple voice mail number may be the life line to mere survival” (US veteran). CVM has found their service is particularly useful in helping the homeless find employment, as it avoids the stigma of an employer contacting an applicant at a homeless shelter. In 2009, CMV served 43,000 households and over 57,000 individuals with voice messaging support. [Charity Website]

Remember your first book? Mine was, honest to God, “Dick and Jane”. FIRST BOOK provides new books to children by mitigating the most important factor affecting literacy—access to books. The group has distributed more than 60 million free and low cost books in thousands of US and Canadian communities, using local volunteers and corporate donations. Key to their success is marketing their near-Draconian financial efficiency – non-programmatic costs total less than 3% of revenue, so 97% of revenue is devoted directly to programmatic costs. As a result, every $1 donation places $10 worth of new books directly into the hands of children in need. This achieves sky-high donor confidence, as evidenced in Random House’s 1.9 million book donation in 2005. [Charity Website]

This is the only charity that rejects you if you’re too poor. Why? Because Modest Needs’ unique aim is to stop poverty before it starts. Their grant programs are designed to assist people who generally pay their bills with no help from anyone, but can’t qualify for conventional assistance. Usually, these people are facing a single financial crisis or unexpected expense they just can’t afford on their own. Donors register with the Modest Needs website and review applicant cases, ‘voting’ for each with points purchased with credit. When a case receives enough points, the funds are released to the applicant. And when their crisis passes, many recipients later become donors themselves. [Charity Website]

Founded by Kenyan journalists to map post-election violence, Ushahidi is a free and open source web platform for data collection, visualization and interactive mapping of fast-moving crises or political events. And it’s been put to good use. To date, Ushahidi has used free “crowdsourced” data from mobile phones, email and the web to map and timeline Sudanese voting violence, earthquake response in Chile and Haiti, violent crime in Atlanta, uprisings in the Gaza strip and medical stockouts plaguing Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and Zambia. [Charity Website]

Public school teachers spend $40 a month on classroom materials, often using their own money. DonorsChoose (Bronx, NY) is changing that, with a website that allows donors to browse school projects and donate directly to classrooms in need, instead of to a general fund (which is often mismanaged). Every classroom project must be submitted by a teacher and vetted by DonorsChoose, who then ships the materials and alerts the Principal that the supplies are on their way. Kids proudly show donors where the money went via photos and thank-you notes, and a cost report shows how every dollar was spent. For their efforts, DonorsChoose recently won Amazon.com’s Non-Profit Innovation Award. [Charity Website]

Finally, a hookup site designed for good, not evil. KIVA is the world’s first online micro-lending program, specializing in loans and grants to the developing world. The World Bank now recognizes over 7,000 microfinance institutions, and potential donors are often intimidated by the sheer number of choices. KIVA simplifies the selection process by running their charitable web portal very much like an Internet dating site: just browse the entries to learn about applicants and their businesses— you can even see how close they are to being fully funded. If you want to make a loan, just click on the “Lend $25” button. KIVA will then distribute the funds to a reputable microfinance firm, which pools donations until the full loan amount is available for lending. Once fully funded, entries are marked inactive and removed from KIVA, which prevents abuse. [Charity Website]

Sam Kinison once said “I’ll never support wife-beating, BUT I UNDERSTAND IT!” Well, American telecom supergiant Verizon Wireless goes much further than that. Since 2001, Verizon has distributed 90,000+ wireless phones (with service) to battered women’s shelters. In 2009 alone, the Verizon “HopeLine” program supported 23,000 wireless phones using 69 million free minutes. The program is funded in part by collecting and refurbishing obsolete wireless phones for resale (condition and brand don’t matter). So think twice before trashing that NovAtel PTR-870 in your junk drawer, and dump it at any Verizon store. (And no, I’m on AT&T). [Charity Website]

Mary’s Meals runs school feeding projects, providing 390,000 of the world’s poorest children with a meal a day AT their place of education. This simple, ingenious act gives kids essential nutrition and a reason to go to school, thus providing the education that helps break the poverty cycle. The program operates in 15 countries, and began when founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow visited Malawi and met a young boy whose mother was dying from AIDS. Magnus asked the boy what he hoped for in life, and he replied: ‘… to have enough food to eat and to go to school one day’. The idea behind Mary’s Meals grew from that conversation. Mary’s Meals was nominated for Britain’s Most Admired Charity of 2010, but lost to those bastards at St. Giles Trust (who work with ex-offenders from Wandsworth Prison and provide health services to South London’s homeless). [Charity Website]

Due to its affiliation with ex-President Jimmy Carter (who is NOT the founder), Habitat for Humanity is probably the most famous community service project in America. Habitat builds affordable, simple housing for the needy using local volunteers as much as possible. Habitat’s innovation is that the houses aren’t free: yes, the recipients pay no interest on their mortgages, but they are required to work on the home for at least 500 hours before taking ownership (a process known as “sweat equity”). And to keep the new owners from selling the home at a quick profit, Habitat insists on ‘right of first refusal’, where they can buy back the house for whatever the recipient has paid on the mortgage. To date, Habitat has built over 300,000 homes for needy families. [Charity Website]

Ever since Zeus invented technology (that’s what happened, right?) mankind has been constantly inventing. Some creations – like the iPod or the electric nose hair trimmer – become so ingrained into our everyday lives we can’t imagine a world without them. Others, meanwhile, are… these. Some inventions, no matter how brilliant, are mostly remembered for failing incredibly hard.

The Mattel Intellivision was a home game console released in 1979. Development began less than a year after the introduction of its main competitor / arch-nemesis, the Atari 2600. It had graphics and sound capabilities that put the 2600 to shame, but that was only the beginning of its innovations. Intellivision was the first 16-bit gaming system, the first to feature voice synthesis, and easily the first to feature downloadable games via cable.

But poor marketing, along with a poorly designed non-ergonomic 16-direction control pad lead to Mattel selling only 3 million units over its lifetime. Not bad, you say? The underpowered Atari machine sold ten times that number. In 1983, the video game market crashed – only to be revived by the Nintendo NES, a system with all of the Mattel’s innovations but none of its shortcomings.

The first digital home video format was introduced in 1978, known as Laserdisc or “DiscoVision” because this was the ’70s. Brought to market just two years after the introduction of videocassettes, this high-capacity digital storage format meant video and audio quality far exceeding any VCR. Compact Discs, still four years down the road, were based on this technology. Laserdiscs boasted extremely sharp images – the likes of which had not yet been seen on home video – as well as digital surround sound.

Unfortunately, the discs were heavy and easily damaged, and the players quite loud compared to VCRs. There was no recording capability, and the discs and their players were super expensive. VCRs reigned supreme until the advent of the DVD, which was a kind of mini Laserdisc.

The very first widescreen projection format, Cinerama, made IMAX look like a wussy. Projecting a Cinerama film meant projecting three synchronized 35mm projectors simultaneously onto a gigantic curved screen. While technically challenging to present and requiring a skilled projectionist (or three), the results were visually astounding and far ahead of any other method of the time. 

Did we say “technically challenging”? We meant “damn near impossible.” Projecting three films with perfect synchronization is every bit as hard as it sounds, and there was no means of automation. The projectionists just had to be that good. Plus, very few theaters were willing to make the necessary and expensive modifications. As a result, only a couple of dozen films ever used the format.

As the other home videocassette format, Beta is synonymous with “also-ran.” Sony’s format offered much smaller, more durable cassettes and better resolution than JVC’s competing VHS format. Betamax even beat VHS to the US and Japan markets by over a year. So what went wrong?

The “format wars” between Beta and VHS (see: Sony and everyone else) are the stuff of tech legend. Sony misjudged the home video market in a number of ways, but the most likely cause of Beta’s failure was Sony’s reluctance to license its technology. JVC had no such qualms, resulting in a wide array of manufacturers selling VHS machines much more cheaply than Betamax. Also, Beta machines could initially only record for 60 minutes, compared to the 3 hours of VHS. VHS wins…

Simply put, Quad would now be called 4.0 surround sound. Like stereo, but… twice as much. It was intended to replicate the experience of live sound on speakers, which it did. Debuting in 1971, several quad vinyl records were released in differing (and incompatible) formats. Played on the right system, the “3-D audio” result was pretty spectacular. 

But there are about a billion ways to produce quadraphonic sound, and no single format was ever agreed upon. Dolby surround sound, which does pretty much the same thing, was standardized and eclipsed quad quite quickly. Of course, surround is primarily used for movies. For listening to music, most people think stereo is just fine.

Look familiar? That is a QR code, short for “Quick Response”, and they’ve been popping up all over the place for the last ten years or so. Storefronts, packaging… you probably have one tattooed on your butt. They’re like barcodes on crack; they serve the same purpose (as barcodes), but hold a lot more information. They were originally used to track parts during manufacture by the auto industry, but what fun is that when they can be used in advertising?

The problem is, nobody knows what the hell to do with them. PR for the QR was severely lacking. A recent study showed that about 80% of college students, that most tech-savvy of demographics, have no idea what to do with a QR code. Hint: scan them with some third party app on your smart phone.

And once we do figure it out, what’s our reward? Why, intrusive, in-your-face advertising, of course… what tech-savvy consumers love most of all. I have no idea what went wrong.

DATs were introduced in 1987. They were tiny little cassettes that record digitally at CD quality or better, meant to replace standard cassette tapes. They were far superior to cassettes, more durable and portable than even CDs, capable of 16-bit sampling and widely varying recording lengths. Why, they’re the Superformat of the future! And since the music industry is never scared of new technology, we can’t figure out why – oh, wait.

The failure of DAT as a format for selling music was (of course) mainly due to piracy concerns. Music industry types were concerned that piracy would skyrocket with a high fidelity, recordable medium – and effectively buried the technology for consumer use. This paved the way for all-digital formats like mp3, which of course are much easier to pirate. Great job, music industry!

As seen in every ’90s sci-fi movie, fully immersive 3-D computer generated imagery is essentially virtual reality. Even in the early ’90s, companies like the cleverly-named Virtuality were releasing VR arcade games like “Dactyl Nightmare” that placed you right inside the cheesy, blocky action.

The technology simply wasn’t advanced enough to meet the vision, and attempts at true VR were underwhelming to say the least. While technology has obviously come a long way, we’re still pretty damn far off from having a real-life Holodeck which – let’s face it – is what we all really want.

Long before Apple released the iPod and began dominating mobile devices up one side and down the other, there was this 1993 ill-advised attempt at that market. The Apple Newton was essentially the father of all PDAs, and was innovative in many ways, but was ultimately a spectacular failure.

The Apple Newton PDA never quite caught on due to a hugely inaccurate handwriting recognition system and an exorbitant price tag, not to mention that it looks like a Commodore 64 mated with a tape recorder. The 1995 debut of the smaller, cheaper and more functional Palm Pilot was the final nail in its coffin. The Newton was discontinued in 1998.

In its first incarnation, DIVX will likely go down as one of the biggest tech flops of all. Its innovation was in catering to those who wanted a way to “rent” movies digitally (you know, like everyone does now), but the way it was implemented was a misstep, in the same way that falling down the stairs is a misstep.

Piloted by electronics retailer Circuit City, the idea was simple enough. You rent a disc, watch it for two days then throw it away. Simple, right? Except that it was like a DVD without all the features, required a separate player that consumers had to buy, and the video rental industry fought against it tooth and nail.

By the time Netflix and Blockbuster came along to make digital rentals simple, DIVX was but a memory, having been sold only between 1998 and 1999. Its legacy lives on in annoying, unnecessary software constantly trying to get you to download it for some reason.

Mike Floorwalker’s blog is freakin’ sweet.

There’s nothing like a good spy movie. Whether a gritty true-life story or the iconic James Bond, we love spies and their craft. Our love affair started when the cold war left us looking for a hero. We needed someone brave enough and crazy enough to take on anyone attempting to destroy the world. Enter Bond, James Bond.

Dashing, intelligent, and brave, Bond burst on the scene with fast cars and beautiful women. Fierce enough to take on any enemy, accomplished in hand-to-hand combat, and able to use every weapon created, he was ready for whatever came his way.

But a spy’s clandestine activities also call for tactics known in the intelligence community as Tradecraft—clever disguises, surveillance, coded messages, and sneaking in and out of places undetected. Here is where it gets fascinating because Tradecraft went to a whole new level when our heroes were given gadgets. What would a Hollywood spy movie be without cool devices? And the more outlandish they are, the more we love them.

Do spies really use cool gadgets like in Hollywood movies? Yes, they do! Obviously, intelligence agencies have only declassified a fraction of the many devices their agents have used throughout history. But here are 10 intriguing spy devices that we know of.

Related: 10 Famously Hard-Core Female Spies

10 The Lipstick Pistol

You remember the scene—Helga Brandt and James Bond are traveling in a small plane. Helga applies a little lipstick and casually says, “I’m awfully sorry to leave you, but I have to get off.” Then, dropping her lipstick to release a disorientating gas, she parachutes out, leaving Bond trapped in a plane about to crash. Who would have suspected a little tube of lipstick of being a deadly weapon? And really, it’s a pretty good distraction. From Rita Hayworth to Claire Standish’s cleavage applicator in The Breakfast Club, men have always been beguiled by a woman applying lipstick.

Unfortunately, if you were an enemy of the KGB in the 1960s, watching a woman put on her lipstick could also have been deadly because female KGB operatives were carrying 4.5mm single-shot “lipstick” pistols as weapons. No one knows how many men were assassinated after meeting up with these lipstick-pistol-packing KGB agents, but the International Spy Museum displays one confiscated from a KGB agent in the mid-1960s. These Soviet-issued lipstick pistols were known as the “Kiss of Death.”^[1]

9 Shoe Heel Transmitters

What can you do with a shoe? If you’re agent Maxwell Smart, you can make a call. While this sitcom spy had a telephone in the heel of his shoe, in the world of espionage, you’d have a secret transmitter. During the ’60s and ’70s, the Romanian Secret Service worked with their postal service to intercept and place devices in the shoe heels of Western diplomats in Eastern Europe who mail-ordered their shoes from Western European stores. They also planted agents at hotels where they had access to the rooms of American diplomats. Once they gained access to their shoes, battery-powered microphones and transmitters were hidden in the heels. The transmitters functioned until their batteries died.

This scheme enabled them to listen to meetings the diplomats attended until the bugs were finally discovered. When the meeting rooms were swept, the recording devices gave off a signal that the diplomats’ security staff kept picking up but couldn’t locate. Then they noticed the signal disappeared every time the diplomats left the room, and the devices were found.^[2]

8 Pigeon Cameras

It’s not often you get to applaud pigeons, but these often misaligned birds have been awarded Medals of Honor for distinguished military service. When it comes to Spycraft, pigeons aren’t high-tech, but once they played a vital role in the gathering and exchanging information.

In 1908, Dr. Julius Neubronner was granted a patent with the German Patent Office for the pigeon camera he developed. He initially sold aerial shots taken by pigeons as postcards. However, in WWI, these aerial photographers were used for a very different purpose.

Cameras were strapped onto pigeons “serving” in the National Pigeon Service (Special Section) to pinpoint enemy locations, determine what weapons they had, and create topographical maps. They were also used to deliver messages and information when radio signals were weak or being intercepted, resulting in lives being saved. When flying into enemy fire, pigeons had a 95% success rate of finishing their mission. These brave birds were responsible for much of the vital information we obtained.

Considered equal to the Congressional Medal of Honor or the Victoria Cross, the Dickin Medal of Honor was created to honor animals who aided the war efforts. Of the 54 Medals awarded, 32 went to pigeons, including The Scotch Lass, who continued to fly injured to deliver vital micro-photographs to allied troops in the Netherlands.^[3]

7 Bulletproof Headphones

Picture a small room in an abandoned building or the back of an unmarked van. Inside, an operative wearing headphones listens to conversations, sending and receiving information and triangulating locations. It all seems pretty routine unless something goes horribly wrong, and it often does.

That’s just what happened in 2009 in Afghanistan when a CIA officer found himself trapped in an alley with an armed gunman. The agent was shot twice with a rifle. A shot hit each of his headphones on either side, protecting him from receiving two bullets to the head. So, maybe they weren’t exactly bulletproof…a few inches to the right or left, and the agent wouldn’t have survived. But maybe the government can work on perfecting the design.^[4]

6 Dog Doo Transmitter

Known formally as T-1151, this important device was more often called the Doo Radio Transmitter. Designed to resemble dog, tiger, or monkey poop, it was used in Vietnam to track the movement of enemy troops and supply caravans and aid in planning military strikes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Both the military and CIA monitored their transmissions. More often than not, people avoid touching poop and seldom think of it as a secret weapon, so they were rarely discovered.^[5]

5 Insectothoper

Spy agencies need to be good at bugging conversations. The CIA is no exception, so in the 1970s, they created the Insectothoper. This mini robot was shaped like a dragonfly with a little engine and a tiny microphone inside its head. It could fly 650 feet for about 30 seconds, just enough to land next to someone whose conversation they wanted to hear. It worked well indoors, but outside they discovered it was too light to handle even slight breezes, which prevented it from being controlled.

The idea of using bugs to bug people appealed to the Russians as well. In 1976, the KGB unsuccessfully attempted to copy the insectothoper—or did they? The CIA now successfully deploys remote-controlled insectothopers much smaller than the original dragonfly.^[6]

4 A Fish Called Charlie

In the 1990s, the CIA’s Office of Advanced Technologies developed Charlie. Like Starkist’s Charlie the Tuna, Charlie was a fish. But this Charlie was actually a remote-controlled robotic catfish. Like all good clandestine spy gadgets, Charlie had a microphone inside him and was so realistic he could be mistaken for an actual catfish. He was one of the CIA’s early attempts at creating unmanned underwater vehicles for intelligence purposes. Charlie was supposedly for collecting water samples near nuclear power plants. The idea has since spawned other robotic fish used by universities for testing water.^[7]

3 Scrotum Concealment

In the world of Spycraft, it’s often necessary to think creatively when it comes to concealment. This gadget proves just how creative the CIA can be. A downed fighter pilot who had to eject needed a way of communicating his location in order to be rescued. But where could he hide a mini radio that wouldn’t be located if he was captured and searched?

The CIA’s department of Science, Technology, and Weapons found a place! Called the Scrotum Concealment, it was designed to look like, well…a scrotum. This device would be glued into place until needed and then yanked off. Inside was a mini radio that pilots could use to call for help. For mortifying reasons, the scrotum device was never approved for use.^[8]

2 Bulgarian Umbrella

In For Your Eyes Only, Q shows Bond what looks like a regular umbrella. When activated, spikes come out as it closes over a person’s head, causing death. For Georgi Markov, death came on September 7, 1978, from a Bulgarian Umbrella Gun.

A Bulgarian dissident writer who defected to Italy in 1968, Markov ended up in London working for the BBC World Service. For his crimes, Bulgaria’s communist dictator, Todor Zhivkov, ordered him killed. Markov was walking in broad daylight when he felt a sharp stinging pain in his leg. Turning, he saw a man behind him with an umbrella quickly get in a taxi and disappear.

Markov’s death was neither quick nor pleasant. Performed at Wandsworth Public Mortuary, the autopsy revealed his lungs were filled with fluid, his liver damaged, and his blood poisoned. In addition, his intestines, heart, and other organs had hemorrhaged, and his white blood cell count was exceedingly high. A puncture wound in his right thigh had a hollowed-out metal pellet inside. Forensic investigations revealed the wound did not come from a standard gun. His symptoms added to the fact that the Soviet Union was experimenting with Ricin led officials to determine that Markov had been killed by this caster bean derivative.

Scotland Yard believed the assassin used a seemingly innocuous umbrella, altered to inject poisonous Ricin pellets by pulling the umbrella’s trigger. Ricin is a cruel killer. In addition to the symptoms above, it causes fever, difficulty breathing, vomiting, and diarrhea. It takes days to die. Markov never saw a threat coming and never stood a chance. Eventually, KGB defectors Oleg Kalugin and Oleg Gordievsky corroborated that the KGB gave the weapon to Bulgarian Secret Service agent Francesco Gullino to carry out the assassination.^[9]

An entire room filled with Umbrella Guns was discovered in Bulgaria in 1991.

1 The Rectal Tool Kit

What spy wants to be without a good tool kit? The world of espionage is a deadly one, where being captured can mean not only death and torture but also the possibility of information getting into enemy hands. Because of this, the CIA’s Technical Division created the Rectal Tool Kit. This sealed, oblong-shaped case contained numerous items that could be utilized for escaping, such as lock picks, drill bits, knives, and miniature saws. It was designed so agents could put it someplace no one expected anyone to look if they were searched. The Rectal Tool Kit was issued to agents by the CIA in the 1960s.^[10]

These are just some of the gadgets created for secret agents. There are many others—Caltrops, the KGB Model F-21 Coat Button Camera, the list goes on and on. The Deutsches Spionagemuseum in Berlin, KGB Espionage Museum and Spyscape in NYC, and the International Spy Museum in Washington DC are filled with gadgets used by spies to do clandestine surveillance, defend themselves, and eliminate enemies when necessary. But with tens of thousands of gadgets remaining classified, we may never know just how many cool gadgets exist in the world of Spycraft.