Today, cars take up a significant part of our lives. They help us get from point A to point B with relative convenience and provide us with a freedom and independence that public transportation is mostly incapable of providing.

However, today’s cars are more or less uniform in terms of their style and features. So it is always fascinating to look back and see what might have been if the more curious automobile-related inventions of yesteryear had actually caught on.

10 Charvolant

The Charvolant (aka the kite-carriage) was a carriage pulled solely by kites. It was invented in the 19th century by English schoolteacher George Pocock who had a great interest in kites and their ability to lift small items, light loads, and even people.

The Charvolant could hold several passengers and move at a fairly fast speed, depending on the pace and the type of wind present. Several reports of kite-carriages traveling around England circulated shortly after the bizarre invention and attracted considerable attention from the press and the public.

Pocock believed that Charvolants were the most pleasurable, safe type of travel and could be used for naval and military purposes as well as for crossing rivers. However, not everyone was of the same opinion. Critics stated that using wind for travel was not feasible because it is fickle and changeable, not to mention that it would suit only those who wanted to go in the direction toward which the wind was blowing.

9 Horsey Horseless

Back in the early years of the US auto industry, horse-drawn carriages and automobiles shared the roads. But the cars scared horses, resulting in dangerous situations. Nonetheless, a solution was soon proposed by Uriah Smith, a member of a strict Protestant sect known as the Seventh-day Adventists.

Smith had designed a car that had a big wooden horse head stuck on the front of it. As an added bonus, the hollow head of the horse also served as a fuel tank.

Smith’s logic was simple: If a car looked like a horse, other horses wouldn’t be scared of it. By the time the horse could discover its error, the strange automobile would be long gone and the horse would have no reason to grow frantic. Unsurprisingly, the Horsey Horseless did not take off. It is unclear if it was ever even produced.

8 Routefinder

The Routefinder was an early satellite navigation system that showed UK automobile drivers the roads they were traveling down, the mileage covered, and the end point of their journey. The curious device consisted of a little map scroll inside a watch which was to be manually scrolled as the driver moved along the route. Several scrolls could be fitted into the watch for a trip.

The disadvantages of the Routefinder included a limited number of available journeys, the inability of the system to respond to changes of direction, and no warning of roadwork or traffic ahead. The Routefinder never took off since automobile drivers were scarce in Britain at that time.

7 Running Boards

Back in the day, if you didn’t want your dog riding inside your car, it could ride “safely” on a running board attached to the car. Some were simple running board–based boxes and shields while others, such as the Bird Dog’s Palace, were sturdy external steel enclosures.

The latter were quite elaborate. They came in several sizes and included a barred door that could be released without the driver leaving his seat and an oilcloth cover that could be unrolled and buttoned into place if the weather got bad.

The most terrifying and dangerous pet carrier must have been the dog sack, an actual canvas sack that (thankfully) had a head hole and was hooked and clamped to the side of the car.

6 Wrist-Twist Steering System

In 1965, Ford engineers came up with the Wrist-Twist steering system which replaced one large steering wheel with two small handheld wheels that were twisted like dials. The new system promised a more comfortable ride, a better view of the road, and easier parallel parking.

It was said that the steering effort required by the Wrist-Twist was only a fraction of the effort required by a regular steering wheel. This was because only the forearm, wrist, and hands were involved as opposed to the full arm, torso, and the neck involved in standard steering.

Adaptation to this new kind of steering was said to be instantaneous. It is worth mentioning that the man who engineered the Wrist-Twist was actually a missile engineer who knew nothing about cars.

5 Water Mobile

The water mobile (aka the Vacationer) was an amphibious luxury cruiser proposed by industrial designer Robert Zeidman. His interest in amphibious vehicles came from wartime service. Unsurprisingly, the water mobile was to be targeted toward ex-GIs who could finally have their own amphibious crafts.

The six-wheeled water mobile could turn into a yacht or a trailer, thus providing the best of both roads and water. It was supposed to be 10 meters (34 ft) long and could house up to six people.

Amenities included a stove, shower, dishwasher, sink, oven, fridge, freezer, and bathroom. A bunk could also be built into the driving compartment for those drivers who wished to hire a paid chauffeur-pilot.

4 Glare-Proof Glasses

Glare-proof glasses were cone-shaped shields fastened onto regular spectacle frames. Holes were cut in the middle of the 2.5-centimeter (1 in) shields to give the wearer visibility.

Glare-proof glasses eliminated headlight glare from approaching cars. When meeting an oncoming car, the driver would simply turn his head slightly to the right, which would automatically cut off the glare from the car lights and allow the driver to focus on the side of the road.

This helped drivers to avoid road accidents. But the same could not be said for drivers who, upon sighting individuals adorned in these ridiculous glasses, would burst into a fit of laughter and possibly lose control of the wheel!

3 Pedestrian Safety Devices

Pedestrian safety devices were placed in front of early cars to catch pedestrians who had been hit by cars. They were patterned after the cowcatcher device, which was invented in 1838. That device was attached to the front of a train to clear obstacles off the track.

Pedestrian safety devices varied in both their form and their precise function. Some, such as the Protector, were made in the form of seats so that a pedestrian who had been hit would be scooped up from the street and propped up onto the seat.

Others, such as the Man-Catcher, rolled a fallen pedestrian in front of the vehicle until the vehicle could be brought to a stop. This saved the pedestrian from being crushed to death.

2 Fifth-Wheel Parking

Most people hate parallel parking and avoid it at all costs. Thus, it is a shame that fifth-wheel parking, a system invented by Brooks Walker in the 1950s, never took off. Fifth-wheel parking was a system that was supposed to ease the difficulty of parallel parking. It used a hydraulic pump and the car’s spare tire, fitted underneath the car, to guide the car in and out of parking spaces with ease.

Walker’s first prototype was created on his own Packard Cavalier sedan, and he demonstrated his fifth-wheel parking at numerous auto shows in 1953. The big car companies were not enthused, however, and the next 20 years saw Walker fitting and modifying different cars to further develop his system.

His ultimate goal was to create a system that could be applied to any car with no changes to its basic structure. As we know today from our continued struggle with parallel parking, his system was never implemented.

1 Ford’s Soybean Car

In the 1940s, Henry Ford experimented with making plastic parts for automobiles. These experiments eventually resulted in what became known as the Soybean Car or, more recently, the Hemp Car.

The frame of Ford’s Soybean Car was made of tubular steel and had 14 plastic panels attached to it. The exact ingredients of the plastic panels are unknown, but it is believed that they were made from a chemical formula that included ingredients such as soybeans, wheat, hemp, flax, and ramie.

The Soybean Car was designed for a number of reasons. First, Ford wanted to engage in a project that combined industry with agriculture. Second, there was a shortage of metal at the time due to the ongoing world war and Ford hoped that his new plastic materials would eventually replace the traditional metals used in cars. Finally, Ford claimed that plastic panels made the car safer than traditional steel cars.

In 1941, Ford unveiled the Soybean Car at the annual community festival called Dearborn Days. By that time, however, America’s entry into World War II had suspended all auto production. When the war ended, an abundance of cheap metal quickly ended the appeal of the plastic car.

Laura is a student from Ireland in love with books, writing, coffee, and cats.

It is tempting to think life in the 21st century is a world away from the 1800s, but despite the communication revolution that we are all living through, we still owe much of our daily life to the inventions of back then. More modern amenities than you might think first showed up during the 19th century, particularly the Victorian era.

People in the 1800s were endlessly inventive and inquisitive and constantly tried to expand their knowledge and improve their society. And while it’s true that not all of their inventions were thought through particularly well, there are some that were just so good that we’re still using them today. Here are ten of them.

10 Cement

Though we may think of cement as a modern building material, it has a long history dating back to the building of the pyramids, where they mixed a rudimentary form of concrete to make mortar. The ancient Romans used a similar material in the building of the Colosseum.

But the concrete industry really took off with the invention of Portland Cement in 1824. Portland cement is the main ingredient of modern concrete, which is then mixed with sand and rock to form a hard but malleable mixture. Joseph Aspdin was an English bricklayer who made the first Portland cement by burning powdered limestone and clay in his kitchen stove, producing a powder that could be mixed with water.^[1]

Concrete is easily transportable (when compared with chunks of rock), immensely strong, and can be poured into hard-to-reach places. In Victorian times, concrete was used mainly for road-building and heavy industry, though it was occasionally used to build houses.

9 Chocolate

Although cacao has been used in the Americas for thousands of years, chocolate as we know it today came about in the 19th century. Some progress had been made in the process by Coenraad Johannes van Houten in 1828, when he invented the cocoa press, which could squeeze the cocoa butter from the roasted beans, but it wasn’t until 1847 that Joseph Fry created the first solid, edible chocolate bar using cocoa butter, cocoa powder, and sugar.^[2]

He added extra cocoa butter to the pressed beans, which allowed the chocolate to set in a convenient bar shape. The process was perfected further in 1875, when Daniel Peter and Henri Nestle added condensed milk to create the first milk chocolate bar. Chocolate has become one of the most successful products on the planet and has been instrumental in the formation of several other industries—such as the diet industry.

8 Flushing Toilets

Okay, we’ve always had toilets in some form or other, and sometimes, they were surprisingly sophisticated. The Indus Valley Civilization in Bronze Age Asia, for example, had a network of sewers beneath the streets into which toilets emptied with water. Similar systems were found during excavations of the Minoan civilization in Crete.

However, the design for flushing toilets that we have today came from the Victorians. Alexander Cumming patented the s-bend toilet in back 1775, trapping smells beneath a water-filled airlock in the pipes. His invention, however, went largely unnoticed until the 1800s, particularly after the Great Stink of 1858, when London was engulfed in a heady sewage smell that shut down Parliament.^[3]

The cistern toilet, combined with the s-bend waste disposal, was a winner, and shrewd businessmen like Thomas Crapper (who did not, in fact, invent the toilet) were soon marketing the new water closets to people who could afford them, along with toilet paper (invented in the US in 1857). Coin-operated locks for public toilets were invented in 1892. They always find a way to monetize.

7 Pasteurization

In 1856, Louis Pasteur was commissioned by an alcohol manufacturer to find out what caused their alcohol to turn sour. It was thought, at that time, that fermentation was a purely chemical process, but Pasteur discovered that yeast was a living organism. This work led to his germ theory of fermentation.^[4]

Pasteur discovered that microbes were killed off when heated at a specific rate, and this led him to work on the preservation of wine and canned foods. He was able to determine the temperature and the length of time food needed to be heated in order to kill off microbes. He called his patented process pasteurization.

It wasn’t until the late 1800s that the process was used for milk. Milk was known to be a common carrier for tuberculosis (TB), and incidences of TB fell sharply after its introduction. Milk was heated to 72 degrees Celsius (161 °F) for 15 to 20 seconds to make it safe. It is illegal to sell unpasteurized milk in many countries, although some farmers still drink raw milk on their farms, leading to that other well-known invention, the stomach pump.

6 The Mail

Although the traditional postal system has been on the decline, it is still a highly efficient system that transports millions of pieces of mail around the world every day.

Before the mail system we know today, postage was calculated not by the weight of the letter but by the number of miles it traveled and how many sheets it was, and the cost was borne by the recipient, meaning that many letters, mainly bills, went undelivered.

The Uniform Penny Post was established in England in 1840, with the famous Penny Black stamp being the first-ever adhesive postage stamp. The number of letters being sent (and more importantly delivered) doubled overnight. In 1839, around 76 million letters were sent. In 1840, it rose to 169 million, and by the time Queen Victoria died in 1901, well over two billion letters and postcards were being sent every year.^[5]

A similar service was introduced in the United States in 1847, and the rest of the world followed. The postal system was so well-used that in London, you could expect to receive a postal delivery up to 12 times a day, and customers complained if mail took longer than a few hours to arrive. However, the cheap postal system also encouraged some less welcome innovations. Also invented during the Victorian era were junk mail, begging letters, and mail fraud.

5 The Sewing Machine

The sewing machine was the original home appliance and, as such, was revolutionary, bringing the technology of the Industrial Revolution into the home. The earliest sewing machine patent dates back to 1755, and an 1830 patent by Barthelemy Thimonnier in France caused a riot by tailors, who, fearful for their livelihoods, destroyed the machines. Further attempts followed until Isaac Merritt Singer perfected the design and began producing his own machines. In 1860, he sold 110,000 machines in the United States alone. The basic design has remained unchanged ever since.^[6]

The Singer Company was one of America’s first multinational companies. Domestic sewing machines cost about one fourth of the annual average wage, but they were selling as fast as they could be made. By the time Singer died in 1875, his company was making a profit of $22 million a year, a staggering amount for the time. This profit was possibly the result of Singer’s other “great” invention—the payment plan, which allowed customers to pay for their machines in installments.

4 The Subway

The subway (aka the tube, the underground, and the metro), is a genius system for quickly transporting large numbers of people across heavily urbanized areas.

Some early underground railways used conventional steam locomotives. In 1866, work began in London on the first “tube” line, using tunnels deep enough to avoid interfering with building foundations and using electricity to power the lines. The tube opened for business in 1890, charging twopence for any journey along the 5-kilometer (3-mi) line. Almost immediately, more lines were built.^[7]

Other countries soon followed. Budapest opened its subway in 1896, Paris in 1900, and New York in 1904. Today, there are over 150 metro systems around the world, of which New York’s is the largest, with 468 stations (or 421, depending on who is counting).

3 The Pneumatic Tire

The pneumatic tire was first patented by Robert William Thomson in 1845 (or 1847, depending on who you ask), some four decades before it was reinvented by John Dunlop. Thomson called his invention the “aerial wheel.” However, at this time, there were few automobiles or bicycles, so the invention seemed rather pointless and never went into production.

By the time Dunlop reinvented the wheel, as it were, and re-patented the pneumatic rubber tire, the bicycle was ubiquitous, and his tires would soon be seen everywhere on streets around the world.^[8]

Filling a rubber tube with air counteracted the bone-shaking effect that cycling on wooden wheels had created, and the process has barely changed since. The emergence of the automobile industry made the pneumatic tire one of the most useful inventions in the world.

2 The Radio

Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio message to himself in Italy in 1895. By 1899, he’d managed to flash the first signal across the English Channel. By 1902, he’d managed to send a message across the Atlantic.

Marconi was not the only radio pioneer. There were many scientists researching radio waves and transmitters, including Nikola Tesla. Dispute arose about which of them had made their discoveries first, and in 1943, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Tesla.^[9]

By the time World War I broke out, radio transmission was still in its infancy, but, as is often the case, war fostered inventiveness, and great improvements were made to the range and quality of radio equipment. Not only was radio used as a communication device, but it also began to be used to relay information about the war. By the time World War II arrived, the radio was a key instrument for information, communication, and propaganda.

According to UNESCO, 75 percent of people in the developing world and almost everyone in the developed world have access to radio today, listening to 44,000 stations throughout the world. Although stations are increasingly moving to digital output, many of them still use technology based on the work done by Marconi and Tesla.

1 The X-Ray

In 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovered the X-ray while working with cathode ray tubes in his laboratory. He noticed that crystals near the tube glowed, and he realized that the rays could pass through some objects. After some experimentation, he discovered that the rays could pass through human tissue but not through bone.

Many scientists became interested in cathode rays, and experiments were soon being made combining the new technology with photographic plates for use by doctors and surgeons. Within six months of Roentgen’s discovery, X-rays were being used by battlefield surgeons to find bullets inside wounded soldiers.^[10]

The public became excited by the new technology, and fairground attractions offered customers the opportunity to look at their own skeleton. Nothing was known about the side effects of the process, and it has been estimated that early machines emitted around 1,500 times more radiation than modern ones, which often lead to patients receiving radiation burns and even to their hair falling out.

Well, they couldn’t be expected to think of everything.

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels, and an occasional travel writer.

There’s nothing quite like the prospect of a battlefield advantage to convince a general or politician to plow some money into a military project that might just work. As this list shows, however, innovation is always a gamble. For every radar or bouncing bomb, there are a handful of expensive, clunky duds.

Some of the most fascinating projects are the ones that almost came to fruition, whether through the determination of a convinced individual or the sheer possibilities that it could offer—if it would only work the way it’s supposed to. From a rocket-powered drum to a chicken-warmed nuke, these are the strangest military inventions to almost see deployment on the battlefield.

10 The Puckle Gun

Invented in 1718 by British lawyer James Puckle, the Puckle gun was the world’s first patented multi-shot weapon. It fired at triple the rate of a soldier armed with a standard single-shot flintlock rifle or musket—yet with the same kind of accuracy and range.

It could even fire peculiar square bullets designed to cause maximum pain. The Puckle gun was massively ahead of its time. If it had been adopted and deployed by a major military, it would have changed the face of warfare, much like the Gatling gun did a century and a half later.

However, the Puckle gun was a victim of its own cleverness. It was unreliable and expensive to make. Its many complicated components made mass production impossible. Worst of all, it was impossible to fold into the military tactics of the time.

Even though it wasn’t a large weapon, it had to be stationary to fire. In addition, the time it took to break it down, move it to a new location, and set it up again proved simply too slow for the military leaders of the era. As a result, it was never adopted by a major world power.^[1]

9 Pigeon-Guided Missiles

The pigeon-guided missile is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a World War II–era missile with three pigeons in the nose cone, with each bird trained to tap at the outline of a German Bismarck–class battleship. If the pigeon pecked in the center of its little screen, the missile flew straight. If it pecked off-center, the missile would alter course to get back on track.

Despite sounding ridiculous, the pigeon-guided missile was both fully functional and incredibly reliable. B.F. Skinner, the brain behind the idea, was a professor of psychology at Harvard University who was renowned for his behavioral experiments with rats. After developing the missile, he stated that he’d never use rats again because pigeons were so trainable.

The idea was fully tested but never used in combat. Skinner blamed the reluctance of generals to get behind the idea of a pigeon guiding an explosive. But in truth, he was beaten to the punch behind the scenes by another invention, radar-guided missiles.^[2]

8 The Bat Bomb

“Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of [64 kilometers (40 mi)] in diameter for every bomb dropped.” This was the fevered dream of Pennsylvania dentist Lytle S. Adams, who imagined Japan being devastated by a series of fires started by tiny incendiary devices delivered by hundreds of bats.

The idea didn’t arrive from nowhere. Adams was a keen spelunker and had been impressed by the bats he had seen on a recent trip to Carlsbad Caverns. When he heard the news that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, he cooked up his zany scheme and took it to his friend Eleanor Roosevelt.

As a result of Adams’s connection to Roosevelt, his bizarre plan was heard at a higher level than might be expected for a scheme that involved strapping bombs to bats. The National Research Defense Committee certainly warmed to the idea. Over time, “Project X-Ray” had over $2 million invested in it to solve the problems of bat transportation and simultaneous release.^[3]

The bat bomb might have been a success if it had been fine-tuned enough, but the US military decided to move all its development resources to a far more powerful weapon. In the end, the atomic bomb was simply a higher priority than the bat bomb.

7 The Great Panjandrum

The Great Panjandrum, two 3-meter-wide (10 ft) rocket-powered wheels attached to a drum filled with explosives, was as peculiar and powerful in practice as it sounds. The Panjandrum was supposed to accelerate across a beach to the speed of a car and blow a massive hole in the German defenses that British troops and tanks could roll through.

Unsurprisingly, the rocket-powered speeding explosive was unpredictable in practice. The Panjandrum was critically unstable and could never be relied upon to go entirely in the direction in which it was pointed.

The designers tried adding a third wheel and steel cables for steering, but nothing really helped. On top of that, when the Panjandrum reached its top speed of 97 kilometers per hour (60 mph), the rockets had a habit of detaching.

Despite this, the Panjandrum was tested in front of top members of the military in January 1944. The test began well. The Panjandrum rolled through the surf in a straight line and began to accelerate. As it started to reach higher speeds, though, the rockets began to detach and fire off in all directions.

The Panjandrum became a spinning wheel of flames that nearly ran down the official cameraman. As the Great Panjandrum disintegrated into a flaming pile of wreckage on the beach, so did any hopes of it ever seeing real battlefield usage.^[4]

6 Hajile

Hajile was created by the same minds that brought you the Great Panjandrum, and in terms of explosive failure, it reaches that high bar. An early retrorocket design, Hajile was created with the hope of using a rocket to slow the descent of supplies dropped from planes. This idea was recently used successfully to land the Curiosity rover on Mars (similar to image above), but the Hajile project was anything but a success.

The Hajile project was named as the reverse of “Elijah,” who ascended to heaven on a column of flame in the Bible story. Hajile was originally tested on concrete blocks with rockets strapped to them. When a dangling weight below the block hit the ground, the rockets would fire to slow the descent of the payload.

However, the first three tests were disasters. Twice, the rockets failed to slow the descent enough. On the third test, too much fuel relaunched the payload several dozen feet in the air.

The device was tested until it was successfully used, and eventually, two jeeps were donated by the United States Navy for real-world testing. One crashed into the ground at 48 kilometers per hour (30 mph), and the second was successfully landed with minimal damage as long as you count an upside-down jeep as a success.

Deeply unreliable, the project was shelved as World War II drew to a close.^[5]

5 Nellie

“Nellie” (aka the “White Rabbit”) was a machine doomed from the start as it was designed to solve an obsolete problem. Nellie was an armored vehicle made to cut a trench through defensive works so that other machines could advance through the trench and bypass the defensive line.

As a pet project of Winston Churchill, work continued on the White Rabbit long after it became clear that it was not the only solution to the problems that tanks faced due to defensive structures.

As time went on, it became clear that Nellie wasn’t even a particularly good solution to these problems. It had a turning circle of 1.6 kilometers (1 mi) and was almost unable to be steered. Conditions inside the cramped cockpit were unbearable. Perhaps worst of all, serious questions were raised about the advisability of using a near-stationary machine with a long guiding trench behind it in the era of bombing runs.^[6]

Despite Churchill’s enduring belief in the project, it was finally formally shelved in 1943. Churchill acknowledged that the project would have been mothballed years earlier if not for his promotion. In the end, he declared that he was “responsible but impenitent” for his misguided enthusiasm.

4 Maus

The Allies weren’t the only ones in World War II who had some bizarre ideas up their sleeves. Adolf Hitler particularly desired an indestructible superheavy tank. He proposed it in 1942, but few others at the top of the German military shared his enthusiasm for the idea. The Maus (“mouse”) was a 200-ton behemoth of a tank designed by Ferdinand Porsche, but it was plagued with mechanical problems from the start.

The driveshaft especially suffered from constant failures. Despite a massive Daimler-Benz aircraft engine powering the motors, the tank’s top speed was only 19 kilometers per hour (12 mph). It featured armor that was more than 23 centimeters (9 in) thick, but the Maus didn’t have a single machine gun to make it suitable for close combat—and the considered opinion of the top German brass was that it would find itself in close combat often.

There were plans to make 150 of these tanks, but the concerns of the generals couldn’t be overcome. In the end, only two prototypes were completed.^[7]

3 The Coleoptere

The Coleoptere (“beetle”) is one of the strangest-looking aircraft ever designed. With a ring-shaped wing wrapped around a fuselage, it was capable of vertical takeoff and landing. In fact, the designer theorized that it might be capable of supersonic speeds once it was airborne.

However, the Coleoptere had problems from its very beginning. In early hovering tests, pilot Auguste Morel complained that it was nearly impossible to determine his vertical height. He had to listen for changes in the engine’s hum to gauge the aircraft’s altitude. Even later versions of the Coleoptere had a distressing tendency to spin vertically.^[8]

The only time that the Coleoptere achieved horizontal flight (instead of a vertical takeoff and landing) was accidental. On its ninth and final flight, the aircraft wobbled wildly during descent and ended up accelerating away horizontally—and briefly. The pilot ejected, the Coleoptere wrecked and burned up, and the project was discontinued.

2 The Blue Peacock

At first glance, the Cold War design of the Blue Peacock doesn’t seem too strange. A massive nuclear mine, it was designed to be buried by British forces in West Germany and detonated to stop a hypothetical Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

However, the design suffered from a major flaw. Buried deep underground, the device would inevitably get cold, and if it got too chilly, the detonator might not be able to set off a nuclear explosion.

The proposed solution is where things take a turn for the weird. The scientists in charge of the project suggested that chickens be buried inside the casing of the bomb with enough food to keep them alive for a week. The body heat produced by the chickens would be enough to keep the device functional.^[9]

Perhaps the oddest part of the whole story is that wrapping a nuclear bomb in chickens isn’t what got the project shelved. In fact, it was fully accepted as a sensible solution to a peculiar problem.

The problem wasn’t the political tangle of burying nuclear bombs in an allied nation, either. It was simply that the British decided that the amount of nuclear fallout that would be produced by the Blue Peacock’s detonation would be unacceptably high.

1 The Gay Bomb

The idea of a “gay bomb” is a terrible marriage of awful science and rampant homophobia that seems like it belongs firmly in the 1950s. But as recently as 1994, the US Air Force’s Wright Laboratory requested a jaw-dropping $7.5 million to develop a chemical aphrodisiac that could be dispersed by an explosive and would cause “homosexual behavior” in enemy combatants.^[10]

The whole idea was a failure on a scientific level. First, there is no known or proposed mechanism for a chemical causing heterosexual people to suddenly change their sexual orientation. Second, there’s also no known or proposed aphrodisiac chemical that’s ever had a measurable effect on the human body, let alone such a drastic one.

It was also a failure on a conceptual level as there’s no evidence that a big gay orgy would actually reduce troop morale. To the contrary, we already have plenty of evidence of excellent career soldiers who happen to be homosexual.

As this is the case, the funding was never delivered and the whole project thankfully never made it past the concept stage.

AJ lives in Stafford in the UK and has equally deep and abiding loves for weird science, horror stories, and good bourbon.

They buzz, hop, and make noises in the night. It is hard to miss the presence of insects. But for most, these creatures cannot compete with things like good food, disease, and global conflict.

Surprisingly, insects play a part in all of those. Scientists are making bug-stuffed cuisine and have found that insects could save us all from super microbes. Most creepy of all, the military has claimed its own insect army for national security.

10 Bugpocalypse

In recent times, media outlets claimed that insects will be extinct within the century. Scientists do not believe such a “bugpocalypse” is possible. When a species is lost, others usually take over its ecological niche.

However, experts agree that insects are being lost at an alarming rate. Worse, the exact causes are unknown. The usual suspects are insecticides, agricultural expansion, and climate change.

Not only are the danger factors complex, but nobody is sure how many insect species there are. An estimated 80 percent have not yet been recorded by taxonomists. There are likely millions.

Although the “bugpocalypse” is not a consideration, researchers have not played down the seriousness of the species being lost. In the next few decades, up to 40 percent of insect species could disappear.^[1]

Nearly every food chain begins with an herbivorous insect, which in turn is eaten by a bigger insect, which is then consumed by birds and small mammals that make the lunch of larger predators. The loss of so many insects would be catastrophic to other species and agriculture.

9 Pseudo-Penises

In 2014, scientists discovered gender benders in Brazil. The females of the genus Neotrogla, a type of insect known as book lice, laid eggs like bug mothers tend to do. However, they also had phallus-type organs. Not just for show, either. During mating, the females used the hooked appendage to keep males from escaping. Ironically, the males had a female-looking pocket for genitalia.

Although other species have females with penis-like structures, none are used for penetration. This makes Neotrogla exceptional. Even more amazing, a related insect genus called Afrotrogla swings the same way.

Although they share a unique trait, there are differences. Afrotrogla lives in southern Africa, not Brazil, and their functional penises look nothing like those of Neotrogla.^[2]

The reason might never be known, but there is a strong clue why they broke the gender mold of nearly all other species. Both live in caves, where nutrients are scarce.

Males risk starvation should they sire babies everywhere as sperm replenishment takes nutrients. However, researchers believe that females do not appreciate this stinginess to share and developed in this manner to actively hunt for sperm packages.

8 Flies For Fido

In 2019, pet food made from flies hit the shelves in the United Kingdom. This was the first time insects featured as chow for dogs and cats in the country. The company responsible, Yora, used the larvae of black soldier flies. The insects were specially farmed by a Dutch protein nutrient company called Protix.

Made with several recipes, the fly food is reportedly tasty and nutritious. The insects account for 40 percent of the protein, which is higher than other bug-based pet food that had already appeared in the United States and Germany.

Other ingredients include potatoes, oats, and what the company calls “natural botanicals.” Yora also claimed that should the kibble really take off, it could help reduce the 20 percent of human-grade meat that pet owners feed their animals. The current manufacturing process of pet food also causes about a quarter of all meat production damage to the environment, something that insect farming does not.^[3]

7 The Smallest Genome

Antarctica’s biggest terrestrial animal is . . . a midge. There are bigger creatures, but they are technically water species. Measuring 0.6 centimeters (0.23 in), the Antarctic midge lives around two years frozen in ice before emerging as a wingless adult that dies within a week.

In the past, the insect’s ability to survive extreme conditions made it a favorite bug to study. After all, its larvae live through deadly dehydration, high ultraviolet exposure, and being frozen solid.

To find out more, a 2014 analysis dug around the insect’s genes. The biggest shock was how tiny the midge’s genome was. A human has 3.2 billion base pairs of nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA). Antarctica’s only true insect has a mere 99 million base pairs. This officially made it the insect world’s smallest genome.^[4]

Mysteriously, all its so-called junk DNA was gone. Once thought to be worthless, junk DNA is crucial in regulating genes. Without it, the midge managed to strip its genome down to a level so basic that nobody had thought it was possible.

6 Bug Bread

Certain bugs are very nutritious but a bit outdated for the modern menu. However, as the global population grows and farming land becomes an issue, the answer could be insect farms that require less space. The problem is selling the idea of eating insects to people who have no desire to buy grasshopper pie.

In 2018, Italian scientists came up with a solution—hide the insects so well that the food appears “normal.” Thus, they baked bread with powdered crickets. While it left no obvious trace of the goobers, there were some drawbacks.

Although highly nutritious, the taste was described as “cat food.” Apart from the flavor fail, the more cricket powder it contained, the less the bread rose. It also lost its chewiness.^[5]

The worst danger was bacterial spores. Scientists are working on eliminating spores that might piggyback on insect powders, like sterilizing them with gamma irradiation. But it might be a tougher challenge to make the bug bread taste or even look appetizing enough for shoppers to be fine with sending their kids to school with insect sandwiches.

5 Bee Cards

A few years ago, Dan Harris from Norwich learned something interesting about bees. Upon discovering that the insects had a fast metabolism responsible for quick fatigue, he recalled how often he and others had encountered exhausted bees on sidewalks. Seeing that such individuals are actually starving, Harris hit upon a novel idea. He was going to make snack packs for hungry bees.

Drawing on the wisdom of his beekeeper uncle and scientist father, Harris spent years developing a card. It had three slots filled with a beekeepers’ sugar formula. The first time Harris tried one of his “Bee Savior” cards on a stricken bee, it worked.

He peeled back the foil covering the slots and placed the card next to the creature. The insect homed in on the formula and fed. When designer Richard Horne’s kids successfully revived a bee with a prototype, he was so impressed that he donated his skills to streamline the card’s design.^[6]

Harris started a nonprofit organization and used crowdfunding to mass-produce the cards, which can fit into anyone’s wallet.

4 Clue To Opalization

In 2018, gem expert Brian Berger trawled the markets of Southeast Asia which are famous for selling fossil-containing amber. Berger found an unusual piece in Indonesia. Mind-blowingly, it held an unknown insect not preserved in amber but in opal, a precious stone.

Opal formation is still not fully understood. Finding a well-preserved insect inside one upended the few theories that supported opalization. Shortly put, this should not have been possible. As far as researchers know, opalization requires a cavity for silica-containing fluid to pour into.

Amber, which traps insects to look exactly like the one found in 2018, is fossilized tree sap. It could suggest that the true way that opals form is similar to amberization.

There is a chance that something unique happened instead—an insect inside amber became opalized. If true, this insect could be among the most ancient ever found as amber takes millions of years to form.^[7]

3 Antibiotic Heroes

Humanity faces a stark problem. There are superbugs that already laugh at our best antibiotics, and this costs thousands of lives every year. Antibiotic resistance recently got charged by an unusual cavalry—microorganisms that live on insects.

Traditionally, soil bacteria were used for antibiotics, but the new line hails specifically from a battlefield most people will never see. Every insect is like a planet for microbes that fight each other nonstop. The poisons they use on each other are basically antibiotics and natural ones to boot.

Tests showed that some of these substances are much stronger against antibiotic-resistant pathogens than anything derived from the soil. The good news is that the exceptional diversity of insects and, by extension, their microbes could offer a vast and long-lasting source of fresh antibiotics.^[8]

The bad news is that it takes years to develop a drug once a promising compound has been found.

2 They Have Interlocking Gears

In 2013, a British scientist was visiting a colleague in Germany when he found an insect in his host’s garden. It was a known species called Issus coleoptratus. In 1957, a feature was found on its hind legs that resembled interlocking gears inside a wristwatch. The discovery ended there.

When a new study looked at the critters from the German garden, it found that the gears were functional. This made the planthopper the first living thing using a design previously found only in the mechanical world.

It took high-speed video to see it in action. As the insect prepares to jump, it meshes the teeth of one leg’s gears with the other. Release happens smoothly, and the creature rockets forward.^[9]

Only the juveniles display the curved strips of up to 12 cogs. Since the youngsters molt several times, they can replace broken teeth. Adults no longer molt, and damaged cogs would jeopardize the insect for life. Instead, the gearless grownups use leg friction to help them jump.

1 Project Insect Allies

The Pentagon’s research wing is called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Their ideas can get weird sometimes, but in 2018, one project made the scientific community edgy.

The Pentagon views food security as national security. That makes sense. A hungry nation tends to fall apart. However, the latest idea sounded creepy from the start. It proposed using insects to infect crops with viruses. Called “Insect Allies,” the technology aims to deliver what DARPA calls “targeted therapies” to fields during times of trouble.

For example, if drought plagued a region, insects would infect the plants with a genetically modified virus to slow down growth and prevent the loss of crops. Other threats the project aims to circumnavigate include floods, extreme weather, and sabotage.^[10]

Some scientists are not convinced that the project is wholesome. Using diseased insects is a classic bioweapon, and why use them when sprinklers do the same job? Other researchers are not concerned that something shady might be afoot. At least four colleges in the United States accepted funding from DARPA to develop the insect army.

Have you ever wondered how somebody came up with an idea? For example, how did somebody ever think of making an X-ray machine or a microwave oven? By accident, that’s how!

Many of mankind’s most useful devices and contraptions were invented completely by mistake. For centuries, scientists have been tasked with finding the solution to a particular problem, only to discover something totally different. Here is a list of some of the most important and useful inventions that were discovered or invented by mistake.

10 Fireworks

Some 2,000 years ago in a Chinese kitchen, a cook made one of the oldest accidental discoveries known to man when he mixed sulfur, saltpeter (potassium nitrile), and charcoal over a fire. Let’s just say combustion ensued. What the cook was thinking, or whether or not he made it to work the next day, is not known, but the he’d just made a discovery that would change the history of the world forever. The ancient Chinese called it “fire chemical” and quickly learned that when they compressed the concoction, such as inside a piece of bamboo, it exploded. Thus, the firecracker was born.

Firecrackers became very common and were used during important events, such as weddings and funerals, all over the country. The Chinese believed that the retort, or bang, from the firecracker, kept evil spirits away from the ceremony. They would eventually learn through experimentation that they could produce thrust that would propel the bamboo container through the air, instead of exploding instantly, and soon, the solid-fuel rocket was invented. They put the two together, firecrackers and rockets, and fireworks were born.

Historians tell us that Marco Polo brought fireworks from China and introduced them to people in regions of the Middle East. From there, they made it to England, where interest in fireworks was strictly to weaponize them. Although the English are credited for devising the standard recipe for black powder still in use today, it was the Italians who turned the making of fireworks into an art form, with the use of multiple colors and choreographed firework displays. Needless to say, the Italians’ celebrations got louder and more colorful as they experimented with different chemical combinations that would produce different colors when burned. However, none of it would have been possible if not for the accidental discovery of “fire chemical” by a 2,000-year-old Chinese cook.^[1] (What the heck was he making, anyway?)

9 Laughing Gas (Nitrous Oxide)

In 1799, Humphry Davy, a young English inventor and chemist who would eventually be elected president of the Royal Society in London, decided to use himself as a Guinea pig to find out the effects of inhaling artificially produced gases, all in the name of science. Along with an assistant, Dr. Kinglake, they discovered that heat-treating ammonium nitrate crystals produced a gas that they could collect in special oil-treated silk bags. They then could run the gas through water vapors, which would purify it.

After attaching a makeshift mouthpiece, Humphry inhaled a bag of the gas and was euphorically amazed and more than pleasantly surprised with the results. He had discovered nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, and probably the very origin of the saying, “They were gassed!” Humphry reported that he felt “giddiness, flushed cheeks, intense pleasure, and sublime emotion connected with highly vivid ideas.” He soon started experimenting with the gas more and more until he was inhaling laughing gas away from the lab and after drinking alcohol when at home. Although he did keep detailed notes on his observations while breathing laughing gas, the amount he was consuming rose dramatically.

Davy would let his patients and colleagues try the gas, as long as they also recorded their experiences for science.^[2] Some of them were quite famous, such as the heir to the famous Wedgwood pottery company and well-known poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Humphry went so far as to construct an airtight box which subjects would get into and breathe pure nitrous oxide. In 1800, Davy wrote Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration, which are 80 very entertaining pages of his experiences while experimenting with laughing gas.

8 Saccharin

Other than lead acetate, which is a known toxin, saccharin is the first artificial sweetener to inexpensively replace cane sugar, and it was discovered completely by accident. Sometime in late 1878 or early 1879, Professor Ira Remsen was running a small laboratory at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, when he was approached by an import firm, H.W. Perot, to do some work regarding sugar. The firm wanted Constantin Fahlberg, an expert on the sweet stuff, to use Remsen’s lab to test the purity of a shipment of it.

After successfully completing the tests, Fahlberg stayed on working for the professor on various projects. One day, while eating his dinner, Fahlberg discovered that his roll tasted unusually sweet and decided to find out why. After deducing that the bread hadn’t been sweetened by the baker, the proverbial light bulb lit up, and he assumed that he must have gotten a chemical on his hands while working at the lab, and that substance had been transferred to his roll, making it taste sweet. Since he felt no adverse reactions to this unknown chemical, he decided to find out what it was.

Fahlberg couldn’t remember exactly what substance he’d brought home on his hands, so he simply taste-tested every chemical he had at his workstation the day before, and voila—he found it! He discovered that he had filled a beaker with phosphorus chloride, ammonia, and sulfobenzoic acid, which, in turn, created benzoic sulfimide, which was a compound he knew of but never had any reason to eat. He had discovered saccharin, which really became popular during the sugar shortages of World War I.

Contrary to popular belief, saccharin is perfectly safe to consume, and there are studies on record to prove it. In fact, as recently as 2010, the EPA publicly stated that “saccharin is no longer considered a potential hazard to human health.”^[3]

7 X-Rays

On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, a German physicist, was working in his lab running tests on cathode rays when, out of his peripheral vision, he spotted a strange glow on a screen that had earlier been treated with chemicals. Wilhelm had been the first person in history to observe X-rays, which is what he dubbed them due to their unknown and mysterious properties.

X-rays are waves of electromagnetic energy that are similar to light, except that they run in wavelengths around 1,000 times shorter, allowing them to pass through soft substances such as skin and muscle but not harder ones such as bone or metal. They would revolutionize the field of diagnostic medicine by affording physicians a non-intrusive means to see inside the human body without surgery. It wasn’t long before this important diagnostic tool made headlines around the globe when it was used on the battlefield during the Balkan War to locate bullets and diagnose broken limbs.

Although the scientists of the day took no time at all in finding the benefits of X-rays, it took much longer for them to discover the harmful qualities of these magical rays. It was believed that X-rays passed through the human body harmlessly just as light does, but after several years, reports of strange skin damage and burns started piling up. In 1904 Clarence Dally, a scientist working with X-rays for Thomas Edison, died of skin cancer from overexposure to X-rays. This caused some scientists working in the field to start being more careful, but it still took quite some time before the harmful effects of radiation would really sink in.

For example, starting in the 1930s, shoe stores in the United States used fluoroscopes to draw people in. These machines would amaze customers by letting them actually see the bones in their feet, and it wasn’t until the 1950s that the danger of this novelty item was realized, and they were banned from use completely. Today, X-rays are still widely used in the fields of medicine, security, and material analysis.^[4]

6 Silly Putty

With no moving parts or electronics to fail, Silly Putty remains one of the most prolific toys ever produced. In its first five years, over 32 million units were bought worldwide. Today, it is guesstimated that almost a third of a billion have been sold around the globe! This was obviously a good thing for its inventor; General Electric (GE) engineer Dr. James Wright, who discovered the gooey stuff in 1943.

During the height of World War II, the good doctor had been tasked by his employers to concoct a synthetic form of rubber. But instead of delivering misery in the form of war machines rolling on synthetic rubber tires, he brought joy and happiness in the form of a cheap and simple way to entertain millions of all ages. While trying different chemical combinations to produce synthetic rubber, Dr. Wright mixed silicone oil and boric acid together, and he managed to invent a sticky mass of goop that would eventually be dubbed “Silly Putty.” (Note that Earl Warrick has also been credited with Silly Putty’s invention.)

The stuff did have a few properties that were rather unusual. For instance, it would keep its ability to bounce even better than rubber throughout a wide range of temperatures, yet when hit with a hammer, it shattered. Scientists at GE experimented with the stuff but couldn’t find any practical use for it. Not wanting to give up on the material, they sent samples to engineers around the globe in the hopes that someone might find a viable use for it.

There are multiple versions of what happened next, but the following is considered to be the most credible: Fittingly, all it took was a party to get Silly Putty going. It was a good thing for advertising agent Paul Hodgson, too. He was trying to get a toy catalog together and attended a party where he watched adults having a blast with a ball of some kind of putty. They were having so much fun sticking it to things and stretching it around the room that he decided to include the stuff in his catalog as “Nutty Putty.” Hodgson was surprised when it outsold everything in the catalog, so he decided to buy more. After finding out where it came from, he bought some from GE, filled a bunch of plastic eggs with an ounce of the stuff, renamed it “Silly Putty,” and sold over 250,000 of them in three days, at $1 each!

Over the years, fans have found many uses for Silly Putty, including squeezing it for exercise, fixing a wobbly table leg, picking lint off things, and lifting pictures off comic books and newspapers. Silly Putty made it to space in 1968 with the astronauts of Apollo 8, who used it to hold their tools in place during the mission.^[5]

5 Microwave Ovens

You push “2” on the keypad. A box lights up, and you see a plate rotating with a small, brown packet on it. Soon, a machine-gun rattle fills your kitchen air with the familiar, tantalizing odor of your favorite buttery snack. You have in front of you not only steaming hot and buttery popcorn but one of most prolific machines ever invented in history, and it was discovered by accident! It is the microwave.

Today, there is one of these miraculous contraptions in over 90 percent of American households, providing hundreds of millions with any food from A to Z, and everything in between, in seconds. In 1946, an engineer working for Raytheon named Percy Spencer was working with a magnetron, the main component of a radar system, when he found that a candy bar he was carrying in his shirt pocket had melted into a gooey mess while he was in close proximity to the device. His interest piqued, he placed an egg in the path of the magnetron’s rays and got a face full of egg for his trouble. He then got the idea to put some corn kernels on a plate, and he got them to pop all over the lab!

The rest, as they say, was history. Percy Spencer is also credited with the invention of the proximity fuse, which allows bombs to explode above their targets for a much better effect.^[6]

4 Scotchgard

Fluorochemical technology, which involves products made from chemical compounds containing fluorine, is 3M’s bread and butter, so to speak. They have been global leaders in the industry for well over half a century, yet there was a time when their scientists were greatly challenged by the task of creating useful products using this technology. A young chemist named Patsy Sherman accepted that challenge when she was hired by 3M in 1952 and soon agreed to meet it in 1953. Sherman was then given the assignment to come up with a rubber-like material that would resist jet fuel and, as so often happens, discovered something totally different instead.

It started with an accident when one of her assistants spilled some of a compound they’d been experimenting with on her new sneakers. She was really irritated by the fact that she couldn’t get the stuff off of them no matter what kind of solvent she tried. This intrigued Sherman, who was excited by the tenacity of the experimental product, so she joined forces with Sam Smith, another 3M chemist, in an effort to develop a badly needed and inexpensive fluorochemical waterproofing agent for clothing, something unimaginable at the time.

After a few years spent refining their compound, the team of Sherman and Smith unveiled their brand-new product to the world, and in 1956, the brand name “Scotchgard” was born. 3M had stumbled onto their first big seller. When asked about the company’s good fortune for constantly coming up with innovative and successful products in this manner, Richard Carlton, a 3M executive, astutely replied, “You can’t stumble if you’re not in motion.”^[7]

3 Pacemakers

It was 1956. Wilson Greatbatch was working on a device to monitor and record the sounds of the human heart when he inserted a transistor into his device that was 100 times as powerful as he would normally use. His mistake caused the instrument to create electrical impulses that were perfectly emulating the beat of the heart. So, instead of ruining the thing, which could easily have happened, the device wasn’t monitoring the heartbeat; it was creating one! He was amazed when he quickly realized that his invention could be used as an internal pacemaker, an instrument which, at the time, had to be worn like a necklace, with the thing shocking the patient to keep their heart beating.

The very first pacemakers looked like a television that the patient was tethered to, and since battery power was insufficient at the time, they had to be plugged in as well. A patient who needed a pacemaker then was much like a person on dialysis; they couldn’t leave the machine, and they couldn’t carry it around. An internal pacemaker would allow millions of these people to live completely normal lives. So, a bit bigger than a hockey puck, Greatbatch’s first prototype was implanted into a dog in 1958 and controlled its heartbeat successfully and without difficulty. The first human patient to receive one was a 77-year-old man who lived 18 months, while a young recipient lived 30 years with his.

They did have their problems, though. Body fluids would permeate the device, ruining the circuitry, and batteries would last only about two years, so Greatbatch started looking for better ways to power them. In 1970, he started his own company, Greatbatch Inc., and developed lithium batteries that lasted ten years and would eventually be used in over 90 percent of pacemakers on the planet. The brilliant inventor ended up with 350 patents in his name and was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame in 1986. Today, over three million people benefit from Greatbatch’s inventions, and 600,000 of his pacemakers are implanted every year. Wilson Greatbatch passed away in 2011.^[8]

2 Post-It Notes

In 1968, a scientist working for the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Corporation (also known as 3M) named Spencer Silver was given the job of inventing a super adhesive designed exclusively to be used in the aerospace industry, a very tough industry to design for. His initial attempt was a flop. He was looking for strength but got something strong enough to maybe hold a sheet of paper to a bulletin board, giving them the idea to fashion some notepad prototypes, even though they didn’t have much faith in the concept. Art Fry, another employee of 3M, had the idea to use one of these prototypes as bookmarks in his choir hymn book because he kept losing his place while singing. With this practical use, he realized that the prototype notes worked perfectly by sticking really well while leaving no glue and not damaging the pages.

Silver, Fry, and several others who worked on perfecting the notes had mistakenly invented an entire brand-new hit product line. It was tough going at first, but after four failed marketing attempts in as many big cities, 3M managed to get free samples into the hands of people in Boise, Idaho, where “Post-its” finally took off. It had been 12 years, but it was worth the struggle in the end.^[9]

An interesting story about Post-it notes surrounds the familiar yellow color they chose to initially market them in. The official story is that the yellow “made a good emotional connection with users” and that it also “contrasts well when stuck on white paper.” But according to an insider, the lab next door to the Post-it team’s had a surplus of scrap yellow paper, and that’s how the color was decided. In fact, after their neighbors ran out of it, they went out and bought more. Spencer Silver, who started his education in a one-room schoolhouse, is the owner of 22 patents, including the patent for a “low-tack, reusable, pressure sensitive adhesive” or, more commonly, “stickless glue.”

1 Self-Igniting Matches

Humans have had fire for eons, and we’ve always looked for easy ways to start fires. The modern-day match transformed our world and enriched our way of life in ways their inventors could never have imagined, but early matches weren’t strikable or self-igniting and needed some other means to light. For example, early Chinese matches were coated with sulfur that burned very bright and were used to enlarge an existing fire quickly, but they never evolved beyond that ability.

A Parisian named Jean Chancel opened the door to self-igniting matches in 1805 when he mixed sugar, rubber, potassium chlorate, and sulfur together and coated wooden sticks with the concoction. He then would dip the sticks into a sulfuric acid solution to get them to light. The problem with this invention was the toxic and volatile clouds of chlorine dioxide gas they produced. These clouds were explosive, making them rather dangerous.

The real breakthrough came in 1826, when an English chemist named John Walker invented the first “friction match”—you guessed it—by accident. While working in his lab, Walker noticed that a glob of chemicals he’d been working with earlier had dried and formed a lump on the end of his stir stick. Not wanting to mix the chemicals into his present experiment, he started scraping the stuff off the implement and was both startled and pleased when it burst into flame! Walker used a sulfur-based compound on the matches’ heads and rough paper coated with phosphorus to strike them with. The user would fold the paper over the match and pull it through while applying a bit of pressure to light it. He sold quite a few of these fire sticks, but they had a problem: The sulfur burned so violently that it would burn through the stick, and the flaming head would come off, many times with undesirable results.^[10]

Matches these days are made from a red phosphorus concoction, first employed by Johan Edvard Lundstrom, which is completely nontoxic. Safety matches, which are familiar to most today, were first produced and sold in the United States by the Diamond Match Company, which gave up their rights to patent them so that any company could produce and market safety matches.

I live in Northwestern Pennsylvania in the United States of America, in “one of the Original 13” I like to say, where I grew up with a fascination for collectibles like baseball cards, coins, stamps, and old bottles, just to name a few. Always a self-starter, I’ve taught myself many different things and have ended up with a large variety of skills and hobbies in both the old and new and have recently started putting them to use on the Internet. I have been writing in several capacities for decades.

In a world of short-lived inventions, today’s gadgets and fads become tomorrow’s relics; sometimes by accident, often by design. Two hundred years of industrial society have changed the world beyond recognition. But many radical technologies of the past have been quite short-lived, reflecting changing social realities, production methods, and cultural obsessions.

10 Accidental Inventions That Changed The World

10 The bathing machine

The idea of organized leisure took hold in England during the Industrial Revolution. Belief in the healthy properties of sea air encouraged the rise of the modern summer vacation, but sea bathing became a dilemma in the face of emerging Victorian prudishness. To discourage intimacy between bathers of opposite sexes, beaches became gender-segregated, and bathing machines soon crowded England’s fashionable resorts. These enclosed cabins allowed for changing into the conservative bathing suits of the day, and could be wheeled into the surf, preventing unsightly displays of naked flesh.

As late as 1911, signs at one English seaside town warned that “No female over eight years shall bathe from any machine except within the bounds marked for females,” and “Bathing dresses must extend from the neck to the knees.” But as the twentieth century progressed, the once-scandalous practice of mixed bathing became widely accepted. The bathing machine became a throwback, but without this quaint contraption, the beloved English seaside holiday might never have endured.^[1]

9 The electric telegraph

Few devices changed the world as rapidly as the electric telegraph. On May 24, 1844, inventor Samuel F. B. Morse tapped out an encoded message before an astonished crowd of Washington lawmakers who had gathered for the demonstration. Forty miles away, his assistant in Baltimore received the Biblical text by wire: “It shall be said of Jacob and Israel, What hath God wrought!”

Morse had invented the world’s first instantaneous technology of communication. A religious man, he later claimed that the first message “baptized the American Telegraph with the name of its author”: in other words, God. The telegraph rose in tandem with America’s railroads and hastened the industrial revolution, triggering the demise of the renowned Pony Express, among other unintended consequences. But in 1876, another invention eclipsed Morse’s remarkable technology. The age of the telephone had arrived.^[2][3]

8 The Cylinder Phonograph

With the age of the telegraph came another innovation: the cylinder phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. Edison was inspired both by the repetitive function of the telegraph and the revolutionary sound transmission of the telephone to create his new recording device. While Samuel Morse baptized his electric telegraph with “What hath God wrought!” Edison’s first message on his new machine was decidedly less dramatic: the inventor was reportedly elated to hear his own recitation of the nursery rhyme “Mary had a little lamb.”

The earliest commercial medium of its type, Edison’s phonograph recorded on paraffin paper cylinders embossed by a needle and diaphragm. Pre-recorded phonograph cylinders were soon available commercially, the crackly ancestor of today’s CDs and MP4s. The paraffin cylinders were soon replaced by more durable metal cylinders covered in tin foil, but these likewise suffered rapid deterioration, so the tin foil covering was finally replaced with hard wax coating.

The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company began exhibiting the new technology in 1878, and Edison made a tidy profit on the windfall ($10,000 manufacturing and sales rights, plus 20 percent of all ensuing profit). Bubbling with visionary ideas, he imagined some possible uses for the phonograph in a June, 1878 feature for North American Review. In addition to the recording and playback features, he suggested, phonographs could be used for dictating letters, creating speaking books for the blind, compiling audio family scrapbooks, recording last messages from the dying, and even as an early form of telephone voicemail. Though many of these ideas were ahead of their time, Edison soon moved on to other projects, including his incandescent electric lamp. Nevertheless, the Edison Company continued to churn out cylinder recordings until 1929, though rendered obsolete by the phonograph discs popularized by the Columbia and Victor recording companies in the early twentieth century.^[4]

7 Hydrogen airships

Forget airplanes. For much of the twentieth century, gas bags were the future of flight; or more precisely, dirigible (steerable) powered airships, filled with the lightest, most abundant element on Earth.

There was just one problem: hydrogen burns. The age of transatlantic airships met a fiery end in 1937, when the 800-foot Zeppelin Hindenburg crashed in New Jersey, killing 36 people on board. Though helium gas is a safer alternative, it was too rare and expensive to keep airship travel afloat.

Curiously, hydrogen airships may be looking at a revival, at least for freight. A 2019 scientific paper envisioned new airships 10 times larger than the Hindenburg carrying huge cargoes in the upper atmosphere. These projected mega-ships would be unmanned drones, constructed from modern fire-retardant materials such as carbon fiber. The benefits in terms of greenhouse gas reduction would be great, but it remains to be seen if this bold vision will take flight.^[5][6]

6 Daguerreotype photography

New is not always better when it comes to technology. A case in point is the Daguerreotype, invented by Frenchman Louis Daguerre in 1839. Like Samuel Morse, Daguerre began his career as a professional painter, but fascination with the science and technology of optics led him from the studio to the laboratory. There he invented the world’s first successful photographic technique, which in key respects remains unmatched even by today’s digital photography. Each Daguerreotype was produced using a silver-plated copper sheet infused with iodine vapors, noxious mercury fumes, then finally stabilized with salt water or sodium thiosulfate. Every image was unique, and being un-pixelated, astounding in resolution (by contrast, even high-res digital imagery becomes distorted by magnification).

Tragically, Daguerre’s studio burned down in 1839, claiming the bulk of his records and many early images. Today only around two-dozen confirmed photographs by Daguerre survive, including landscapes, portraits, and still lives. Then, around the mid-nineteenth century, the Daguerreotype started losing ground to the negative-based wet-collodion process (invented in 1851, the year Daguerre died). This new technique produced a cheaper, more reproducible end product, poorer in quality but more convenient.^[7][8][9]

10 Victorian Inventions We Just Can’t Do Without

5 The Maxim Gun

“Whatever happens, we have got/ The Maxim gun and they have not,” was the gruesome boast of the British Empire, describing its ultimate weapon of conquest. The world’s first recoil-operated machine gun was invented by American Hiram Maxim in 1884, and transformed the face of warfare. Future Prime Minister Winston Churchill witnessed its murderous power at the 1894 Battle of Omdurman. His small British force routed 40,000 Sudanese warriors who “sank down in tangled heaps” before the Maxim Gun’s withering fire. After five hours, some 10,000 Sudanese were killed, with only 20 British dead. Though prone to jamming and eventually phased out by more efficient weaponry, the Maxim Gun remained in western military service through World War One, the first major conflict where opposing armies slaughtered each other with automatic fire.^[10]

4 The Malling-Hansen Writing Ball

Though collected by enthusiasts, the manual typewriter is as obsolete as the quill pen. Hard to imagine, then, the appeal these clunking devices once enjoyed. The first commercial model was the Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, invented in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1865. A squat curiosity resembling a mechanical hedgehog, the Writing Ball was the MacBook Pro of its day. Its biggest fan was German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose poor eyesight prompted him in 1881 to purchase a more efficient means for his prolific writing. So besotted was Nietzsche, the man even composed an ode to his device:^[11]

The Writing Ball is a thing like me:
Made of iron yet easily twisted on journeys.
Patience and tact are required in abundance
As well as fine fingers to use it.

3 VHS recording

For those of a certain generation, few technologies are as nostalgic as the VHS cassette tape, developed in 1970s Japan. Like Edison’s phonograph, VHS was multi-purpose: retailed in pre-recorded format or blank tapes suitable for recording The Dukes of Hazzard over your sister’s graduation ceremony.

Like other relics on this list, VHS is still prized by enthusiasts, and its decline came later than we often remember. American consumers encountered the sleek DVD in 1997, but both formats coexisted for several years until the demise of mass VHS production. An August 2005 Washington Post article thus proclaimed that VHS “has died at the age of 29,” while noting that 94.7 million US households still owned VCR players. Later that year, Revenge of the Sith became the first Star Wars movie released exclusively in DVD home video format. Ironically, 2005 also introduced cult horror movie The Ring Two, reprising the basic premise of 2003’s original The Ring, which revolved around a haunted VHS recording.

Let’s face it: a haunted DVD wouldn’t have scared anyone.^[12]

2 The calculator watch

Back in the eighties, nothing said “it’s hip to be square” like owning a calculator watch. These gadgets were around since the 1970s, part of a broader craze that included wrist-portable TV and video games. But Casio’s Databank line launched in 1983 propelled them to new heights. Iconic status was assured two years later, when Marty McFly sported his Casio Databank CA53W Twincept in Back to the Future (1985).

Casio’s Databank line is still manufactured today, to the delight of Generation Xers. The calculator watch became more of a retro fashion statement than a practical device, but has outlasted that other tech icon of Back to the Future, the short-lived DMC DeLorean sports car. And for better or worse, the Casio Databank anticipated today’s mania for Fitbits, Google Smartwatches, and other wearable technology.^[13]

1 The atomic bomb

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”: nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, witnessing the first atomic bomb test, July 16, 1945.

Historians still debate whether the 1945 destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War Two was justified, or simply wanton destruction. But one terrifying fact remains: the atomic bombs which killed some 200,000 Japanese civilians pale beside later weapons of mass destruction able to kill millions in a flash. Scientists from the US Manhattan Project, which developed the A-bomb, were among the first to warn against the still deadlier hydrogen, or H-bomb. In a September 1945 letter, physicist Arthur Compton even argued that he “preferred defeat in war to victory obtained at the expense of the enormous human disaster that would be caused by its determined use.”

Time will tell how long the age of nuclear weaponry endures, and how it ends.^[14][15]

10 Food Inventions That Changed The Way We Eat Breakfast

About The Author: A native of the UK and naturalized US citizen, Matthew Smith lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with his wife, daughter, and three cats. A history professor by day, he has spent this summer learning how to teach online, and connecting his passion for history to a wide readership outside the confines of academia.

The term ‘dark ages’ was coined by a 14th century Italian scholar called Petrarch, and has since been informally used to refer to the period between the fall of Rome and the beginning of the Renaissance in Europe. While historians rarely use the term anymore, many people still hold the notion that it was a period of relative ‘darkness’ in the history of Europe, Middle East, and Asia, when the knowledge and culture gained during the Greek and Romans eras was destroyed and replaced by anarchy and war, until the ‘light’ of the Renaissance.

Of course, as historians are gradually finding out, the period was anything but dark. The so-called Dark Ages was a time of dynamic change across the world, marked by pivotal inventions in mathematics, navigation, manufacturing, architecture, and countless other fields. Some of the most crucial inventions in history directly come from early innovations during this period, from printing to clocks to modern finance.

10. Astrolabe

The idea of the medieval mariner’s astrolabe could be traced back as far as Ancient Greece, though it was only from the sixth century AD that it could be mass-produced for common use. Simply put, an astrolabe is a device used to measure the positions of celestial bodies, initially developed for navigation and later adapted for various astronomical purposes. It was widely used in the Middle Ages across the Arab world, Byzantine Empire, India, and Europe, and then in Islamic Spain around the 10th century. 

The astrolabe would prove to be a groundbreaking invention in the Age of Exploration, when mariners at sea relied on an adapted version called the mariner’s astrolabe for navigation. For the first time in history, they had a device that allowed them to calculate their latitude by measuring celestial bodies like the Pole Star or the Sun. Portuguese seamen used the astrolabe to determine their return trips from West Africa, followed by the famous journeys made by Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus to India and the Americas, respectively. 

9. Eyeglasses

Salvino degli Armati is often credited with the invention of the first eyeglass between 1285 and 1299. While magnifying lenses and other similar innovations had already been made in the Arab world and other places much earlier, Armati’s invention – combined with the rise of the Italian glassblowing industry – allowed it to be produced at a mass scale for the first time in history. 

His eyeglass consisted of two simple convex lenses joined together with a central joint, with a frame made of materials like bone, wood, wire, or leather. Unlike earlier similar prototypes like reading stones, these eyeglasses could be comfortably placed on the nose.

It wasn’t just a revolutionary invention for reading, but also many other inventions further down the road, like the early microscope developed by Zacharias Janssen and his son Hans in the late 16th century. Galileo Galilei further perfected the combination of a concave and convex lens in the compound microscope in 1625.

8. Woodblock Printing

Woodblock printing was invented during the Tang and Song eras in China. It was the beginning of mass dissemination of knowledge and literacy, believed to have emerged around 600 AD from ancient practices of stone seals and inked rubbings. The process would be perfected by the end of the Tang dynasty, involving engraved characters on wooden blocks, inking the blocks, and then transferring the text to paper.

Woodblock printing was soon being used across China for various purposes, including printing books on agriculture, medicine, calendars, and calligraphy. The year 762 was a major milestone in the field of printing, when the first commercially-printed books were sold in Chang’an. 

Despite its importance at the time, however, woodblock printing was time-consuming and laborious. It would take many more years for it to be faster and accessible enough for mass production, which came with the invention of moveable-type printing in the Song era. 

7. Mechanical Clocks

Invented around the 13th century, mechanical clocks marked a significant advancement in timekeeping technology, evolving from ancient water clocks that had been in use for millennia. The key innovation that distinguished mechanical clocks from earlier designs was the escapement mechanism, allowing a steady rhythm of movement with gears to move in a series of equal jumps. 

The true significance of this innovation wasn’t immediately clear to early clockmakers, as it was just an incremental improvement over water clocks at that point. As we know now, it was the beginning of a new age of precision timekeeping, allowing innovations in other fields like navigation. The earliest mechanical clocks quickly spread across the region spanning northern Italy to southern Germany by the late 1200s, eventually completely replacing water clocks as the preferred timekeeping device of the age. Mechanical clocks would play an instrumental role during the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution eras. 

6. Tidal Mills

Tidal mills were an important medieval invention dating back to the seventh century. Primarily used to grind grain with the power of the tides, they were soon extensively used across modern-day England and Ireland. They were strategically placed in low-lying coastal areas or river estuaries for maximum effect, functioning like traditional watermills that relied on tides instead of the wind. 

At their most basic, tidal mills were constructed with a dam equipped with a passageway to control the flow of water, allowing it to enter during high tide and storing it for later use with a water wheel during low tide. The earliest excavated tidal mill was constructed around 619 AD, discovered at the Nendrum Monastery in Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland. The concept had gained widespread adoption by the 18th century, when most of the world’s tide mills were concentrated in and around London. 

5. Musical Notations

While musical notations existed in some form as early as the late 10th century, Guido of Arezzo is usually credited as the first musician to come up with staff notations. It’s still the foundational notation system for western music, largely invented by Guido as a tool to notate sacred music during the Middle Ages, as it was a time when sacred melodies were still orally passed on due to the lack of a proper system to record them in manuscript form.

Guido’s system introduced four lines or staff and letters, which wouldn’t make sense to most people but would be an instrumental tool for musicians for centuries to come. His system revolutionized music education and vastly reduced the time required to train singers and instrumentalists. Guido also introduced solmization – a technique that assigned syllables to specific intervals and gave way to the ‘do-re-mi’ system still used in Latin music. 

4. Medieval Castles

It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact origins of the medieval castle, as empires and kingdoms have been building fortified perimeters around their settlements for thousands of years. It’s much easier to trace the medieval European castle that we all recognize, however, which really began to take shape during the ninth century. This transformation was particularly rapid in Western Europe, especially in France, and the castles during this period were usually made with a high mound encircled by a ditch along its circumference. 

While they worked well in the beginning, these early timber fortifications were soon found to be vulnerable to fire weapons and general rot over time. The first stone castles were built by King William after the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Stone castles of all kinds would soon crop up across medieval Europe, as builders and monarchs experimented with new designs and techniques to make them more secure. 

3. Algebra

Algebra is a major branch of mathematics that deals with symbols, variables, and equations. Its origins can be traced back to the works of the Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, during the ninth century. The word ‘algebra’ itself is derived from one of his works, Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala, which was arguably the first treatise ever to describe the modern concepts of the field. It was later translated into English as The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, bringing the science to Europe and other places during the Renaissance period.

Muhammad al-Khwarizmi provided systematic solutions for linear and quadratic equations, with real-life applications in fields like calculating inheritance and trade. He worked in the famous House of Wisdom in Baghdad – perhaps the largest library and hub of knowledge in the world at that time.

2. Paper Money

Paper money revolutionized the concept of currency and paved the way for modern finance. While it originated in the Song era in China some time around the 11th century, the idea had already taken root during the Tang Dynasty, when promissory bonds or bills issued by trustworthy agents were already in use on the Silk Road. These were not true paper notes, however, as they still required private individuals to authenticate their value. 

During the Song Dynasty, the state established licensed deposit shops where individuals could deposit coins and receive government-issued notes. The state took direct control of the system in the 12th century, introducing the world’s first government-produced paper currency called jiaozi. These notes were printed with woodblocks, using six colors of ink and varying paper fiber mixes to discourage counterfeiting. 

The Song Dynasty introduced a national currency backed by precious metals in 1265, which could be used across the empire in denominations from one to one hundred strings of coins. While the innovation was short-lived, thanks to the Mongol invasion of 1279, it laid the basis for the extensive system of paper money deployed in the latter Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.

1. Gunpowder

Gunpowder could be called one of the most influential technological innovations in history. It was initially developed by alchemists in Tang-era China in their quest for a true elixir of life. According to legends, one unknown alchemist accidentally came up with the perfect composition for gunpowder some time around 850 AD, using 75 parts saltpeter, 15 parts charcoal, and 10 parts sulfur. It would soon be put to military use, especially against China’s more-formidable enemies like the Mongols. 

The Song Dynasty employed gunpowder in a wide variety of weapons, including ‘flying fire’ type arrows and hand grenades, and even early landmines and flamethrowers. The concept spread further through Mongol conquests, eventually reaching the Middle East and Europe by the 13th century. In the 14th century, Europeans stumbled upon something now known as ‘corned powder’ – an enhanced explosive paste that vastly improved upon the durability and safety of earlier mixtures

Manners and Tone of Good Society (1879), the seminal guide to Victorian dining, outlined how to navigate around the vast array of cutlery and serveware in the Victorian age. Touching food with bare hands was not acceptable behavior.

So everyone had to learn to recognize all the different accompaniments to the usual dinner service, such as asparagus servers, marrow scoops, and grape scissors. Oh, and you had to know how to use them as well.

How do you think you would manage if you sat down to a lovely meal and saw any of the items below? Would you be the toast of the town or commit a gastronomic faux pas?

10 Sugar Nips

Sugar was brought to the grocer in cone shapes called “sugar loaves.” Mountains and hats were often named after them due to their distinctive shape. In wealthy households, the mistress of the house would cut up the loaf using sugar nippers to break the hard substance into smaller, usable parts for the table. Only the mistress would do this as sugar was expensive and kept in boxes under lock and key.

The sugar nips were tongs with a flat surface at the end suitable for lifting pieces of sugar. But they were also sturdy and tough. Nips used for cutting were often made from steel, but decorative tongs for table use were often made from silver with elaborate engravings.^[1]

9 Snail Forks

In Victorian England, the lower classes ate snails regularly. These were affectionately called “wall fish” and were served to locals in pubs like the Royal Oak in Shepton Mallet. Eating snails wasn’t only for the upper classes or the French as most people tend to think today.

The snail would be held in one hand, with or without a napkin, and the snail meat would be plucked out of the shell with the other. Delicious!

While one might not have made a full living doing so, a man in Bristol in Victorian times known as “Snailer Jack” sold snails as snack food. People would eat them to ward against—or even cure—tuberculosis. They were also reputed to have a particular property that strengthened the lungs . . . but only if eaten raw.^[2]

Fancy a snail?

8 Marrow Scoops

Picture this scene if you will. You are a Victorian man or woman at a posh dinner party, and your host’s servants present a glorious roast on the table in front of you. You can’t wait to dig in.

But wait! How can you get the delicious marrow out of the bone without offending your host with caveman-like, bone-sucking behavior? A common problem, we know.

In this situation, it’s best to handle your marrow scoop with the narrow, elongated end directed toward the bone.^[3] Scoop out all the marrow you can, and enjoy the envy of your fellow guests as they are forced to leave their bones on the plate.

As identified by the Leeds Museum, the image above shows a marrow scoop from the late 19th century. Marrow scoops from the mid-1700s (which predate the Victorian era) have a longer, narrower shape.

7 Spoon Warmer

Victorian houses were only heated by fires in each room, so the kitchen was often some distance from where the family would actually sit down to eat. As the food was brought to the table, the cutlery would cool down. In turn, this would cause the food to cool faster when it was eaten.

To avoid this problem, the Victorians invented the spoon warmer. A vessel, often with feet, was filled with hot water, and the spoons were inserted into the opening. Warm spoons helped to prevent rich and fatty gravy from congealing on the plates.

Victorian spoon warmers can rarely be found today. Those lucky enough to spot one might find playful designs such as a snail shell sitting on rocks, an egg-shaped oval on little feet, frogs and fish with open mouths, helmets, or hunting horns. As time went on and homes were better heated, these little devices fell out of fashion. But they remain a delightful reminder of Victorian creativity when it came to dining room etiquette.^[4]

6 Caddy Spoons

In the 1760s, the caddy spoon was created as a unique and beautiful accessory for preparing tea in Europe and America. Tea leaves were kept in a tea caddy, a special box designed to keep the leaves fresh and attractively presented. These were often locked at other times as tea was an expensive and precious commodity.

A caddy spoon, which could fit inside the caddy, was used to measure out a portion of tea leaves for the teapot. Certain shapes of shells, shovels, or ladles were made by Victorian silversmiths. As time marched into the 20th century, these accessories were decorated with local scenes, crests, or place names particular to the area and owners’ tastes.

One of the most valuable caddy spoons was sold at auction in 1931 for over £2,000. Designed by Omar Ramsden, his art nouveau spoon was inlaid with semiprecious stones with a knotwork handle.^[5]

5 Asparagus Server

Asparagus was introduced to English society in the 16th century. But it was not until the 18th century that it became a fashionable and exotic addition to meals. Eating asparagus was the height of elegance and sophistication, so what better to serve this de rigueur vegetable than a pair of asparagus servers?

One might wonder what all the fuss was about and why a spoon and fork would not have done just as well. But the Victorians decided that they needed slightly less clumsy apparatus for fine dining.

Silver asparagus tongs are a captivating item that reminds us of a more elegant era. They are still quite useful today if you wish to enjoy a spear or two for supper.^[6]

4 Knife Rest

When our Victorian friends sat down for dinner, there may have been up to 12 different courses! The knife rest was used to keep the single set of utensils clean between courses.

Probably, the knife rest helped to prevent the tablecloth from becoming soiled between courses rather than merely saving the servants the extra trouble of washing more utensils. Most households certainly would not have changed cutlery between courses.

The first knife rests used at the time of Henry VIII would have been made of wood. But as the Victorians always liked to take things one step further, theirs were made from every metal you can think of as well as crystal and glass, pottery, mother-of-pearl, ivory, and horn.^[7]

3 Grape Scissors

These scissors were often decorated with vines and grape designs as they were used to cut a stalk of grapes in the dessert course. Only then were you permitted to use your hands. In Victorian society, there were only rare occasions when dining etiquette would permit the use of hands at the table—for example, when eating fruit or bread.

In a rather clever design quirk, the handles were longer than the blades so that the grape enthusiast could cut deep into the bunch and select the number of grapes he wanted. The blunt ends prevented the fruit from being pierced. These scissors were made of silver to prevent any tarnishing and to last for many years.^[8]

2 Aspic Spoon

The Victorians could not get enough of aspic. For those fortunate few who have not come across aspic, it is a jelly made from gelatin and the stock from meat, poultry, or fish. Other foods, such as eggs or meat, are suspended throughout the mixture.

Aspic stopped the meats within the gelatin from becoming spoiled by preventing contact with the air and any lurking bacteria. This was perfect for the Victorians, who had not yet invented refrigeration. An aspic spoon featured a long bowl at one end that had one sharpened side to help cut through suspended, more solid objects in the jelly.^[9]

1 Crumb Scoop And Tray

The Victorians were a clean and tidy lot who thought nothing was worse than seeing all the crumbs left on the tablecloth following a meal. So they invented the crumb scoop.

Arriving in the 1850s, this ingenious device was used by the servants to clear the tablecloth of any meal detritus, including breadcrumbs, salad leaves, and anything else that missed both mouths and plates. Crumb scoops were commonly made of silver and could be highly decorated with engravings of floral motifs. The scoop handle was made of bone, ivory, mother-of-pearl, ivorine, or wood.^[10]

Alexa lives in Ireland and loves writing about psychology, sociology, anthropology, and anything historical.

When a new gadget or technological marvel is introduced, people often describe it as something that will change the world. Maybe it will transform business, travel, or communications. But one thing’s for sure: It will be around for a long time.

Of course, very little gets that far. Most inventions that start out strong ultimately die out. These 10 brands and inventions were massively successful at first. But once the public’s interest in their novelty died out, these items bit the dust, too.

10 Inventions That People Really Regretted Inventing

10 TiVo

In the dark days before devices like TiVo were introduced, it wasn’t easy to record live television. And just forget about pausing it to go to the bathroom or grab a snack. TiVo changed all that with its introduction of digital video recorder technology, which revolutionized how we watch television.

With a TiVo attached to your TV, you could record multiple channels at once, making it almost impossible to miss a favorite show. Even more impressive, the system made it possible to skip commercials, a feature that everyone appreciated.^[1]

TiVo’s branding was so successful that it became a verb. People would say that they “TiVo’d” something to watch later. Unfortunately, it was not to last. As digital technology continued to grow, DVRs became largely unnecessary.

TiVo adapted to the times, albeit slowly, and saw its market share drop considerably. Then, in 2016, Rovi picked up TiVo for a cool $1.1 billion and changed Rovi’s company name to TiVo Corporation.

As the new TiVo Corporation focused on licensing its technology rather than producing hardware, it became an attractive takeover target itself. In 2020, TiVo Corporation completed a $3 billion merger with Xperi Corporation, a firm that specialized in licensing tech and intellectual property. The new company is called Xperi Holding Corporation.

The combined entity will continue to use the TiVo brand for consumer-facing digital entertainment products and services. But not the original TiVo digital video recorder that so many of us knew and loved. That’s a tech dinosaur wiped out by the asteroid of progress.

9 Google Glass

Google Glass debuted with a massive amount of media attention and buzz in 2012. The company’s flashy product demo included skydivers streaming their jumps through the device.

The product was marketed as much for its novelty and exclusivity as for its technology, and the public ate it up. So-called “Glass Explorers” were given a chance to demo a prototype for one month before it was made available to the public. Tech enthusiasts clamored for their set.

Google Glass had an integrated 5-megapixel still/720p video camera. However, that core feature was also a significant problem. Privacy concerns arose when the product first became popular as the device was technically violating existing privacy laws in some areas.

Another major factor in ending Google Glass was its hefty $1,500 price tag. All the fanfare and widespread public interest in the device died out rather quickly. By 2015, Google Glass was effectively dead as a consumer electronic device.^[2]

8 Myspace

At one time, almost everyone with an Internet connection had a Myspace page. The social media platform was the first of its kind. From 2005 until 2009, it was the largest in the world and boasted more than 100 million users per month. In 2005, it was purchased by News Corporation for $580 million.

Myspace was as ubiquitous then as Google and Facebook are now, and it was a moneymaking machine. In 2008, the company generated $800 million in revenue. It was valued at $12 billion at its height, making it one of the largest Internet tech companies on the planet. But it wasn’t to last.^[3]

Despite being an influential innovator in the realm of social media, Myspace saw a marked decline in users in 2009 and beyond. Facebook came out of nowhere to supplant Myspace as the go-to social media network, and that’s remained true for more than a decade.

Myspace was sold in 2011 to Specific Media Group and Justin Timberlake via a joint purchase for $35 million. The sharp decline in the company’s valuation couldn’t have been more apparent. Technically, Myspace is still around. It does generate ad revenue but far less than at its peak.

7 Pebble

Although many people reading this are probably wearing an Apple or Samsung smartwatch, there’s a chance that someone is wearing a Pebble. Back in 2012, Pebble became the most funded Kickstarter product of all time when its creators raised $10 million on the platform.

At the time, smartwatches were just beginning to surface on the market. Through the Kickstarter campaign, Pebble was able to cultivate a massive following. The influx of money made it possible for the company to innovate its concept further, and backers began receiving their watches in early 2013.

From there, the company launched more watches directly to the public and even initiated another Kickstarter campaign in 2015 that generated $20.3 million. Pebble was making money and looked to solidify its place in the smartwatch marketplace.

By the following year, Pebble was all but gone. Financial issues necessitated the return of funds received via Kickstarter, and everything was shut down by December 2016.

Fitbit purchased the company’s intellectual property, and Pebble is now defunct. Pebble failed due to lack of capital and Apple’s entry into the marketplace, which siphoned off Pebble’s customers even as Apple expanded the market.

But from the ashes of Pebble rose the phoenix of Rebble. Ex-employees, fans, and developers congregated on GitHub to replace the web services formerly provided by Pebble for their smartwatches. Although the original Pebble hardware will eventually die, this motivated coterie of “rebbles” intends to create a RebbleOS to run on a future version of watch hardware.

Rebble’s competitive advantage is unclear at this point. The group’s inspiration, Pebble, was initially meant to compete at a much lower price point than Apple products. Also, as developer Joshua Wise explained:

The Apple Watch . . . and Android Wear wanted you to interact with them, to make them the center of your life. The Pebble wants to not at all be part of your life, up until it does something useful for you, and then it lets you go back to your life.^[4]

6 Nintendo Virtual Boy

Nintendo has created some of the world’s most innovative ways to play video games. The company brought back the video game industry following the market crash in the early 1980s, but not everything made by Nintendo is worthwhile. The Wii U, for example, was a massive failure. But it barely registers when compared to the disaster that was the Virtual Boy.

In 1995, Nintendo released one of its strangest, most uncomfortable, and most terribly designed products of all time in the Virtual Boy. The device was marketed as a virtual reality style of gaming, but it wasn’t virtual at all. Instead, it offered stereoscopic 3D glasses, similar to those found in movie theaters, to display 32-bit red graphics.^[5]

Players would lean into the head-mounted system and play with the attached controller. The system used a parallax effect to simulate the illusion of depth, but all it really did was give players a pounding headache.

When it was released, the Virtual Boy was touted as an innovation in virtual reality gaming. But the system was terrible. It hit the market in an incomplete state because the company wanted to focus on the Nintendo 64. Only 22 games were made, and the system was canceled within a year.

Top 10 Short-Lived Inventions That Changed The World

5 Napster

People have been illegally copying software ever since it was possible to do so. The same is true of digital music, which rose in popularity during the 1990s thanks to MP3s. People downloaded and shared this music widely on multiple platforms. But the most popular one was Napster.

The company was founded in 1999 and became the primary source for peer-to-peer file sharing online. At its peak, this wildly popular software had around 80 million registered users. Of course, it wasn’t without controversy. Napster became the target of legal concerns when Metallica sued.

The band was followed by Dr. Dre and others, but the publicity only served to increase Napster’s use. Most cases were settled out of court. But one made it through the legal system to nail the platform with hefty fines and an injunction, which caused the company to shut down in 2002.^[6]

Once the fines were paid, Napster came back online and eventually sold its assets to Bertelsmann for $85 million. Several years later, Best Buy acquired Napster for $121 million, but the company has since been sold to MelodyVR.

As of 2020, their strategy has shifted away from a direct-to-consumer model. Instead, the new company appears to be delivering music streaming through business partners who may white label the service. Think of it like your grocery store selling products to you under their store name when the goods are actually manufactured by other companies. As of this writing, zombie Napster is doing that with music streaming.

4 MapQuest

Before everyone had a GPS tracker in their pockets, people used an archaic technology known as a paper map to get around. Until the 21st century, most people had a map or two in their cars at all times, but MapQuest changed all that—sort of.

MapQuest went online in 1996, and it offered free mapping services to its customers. People could go to the website, enter their destination, and print out a map with step-by-step instructions on how to get there.

Before MapQuest became popular, a person could only rely on someone else’s directions to find their way or use a road map to determine their route in advance. MapQuest was innovative and widely used. AOL purchased the company in 2000 for $1.1 billion.^[7]

By 2008, most people who had previously relied on MapQuest for guidance shifted to using other programs. Google Maps took over the marketplace, and MapQuest mostly disappeared, having been supplanted by GPS tech.

Granted, MapQuest did adapt to GPS. Although the company continues to make a small profit, it’s far short of where it was at the turn of the century.

3 PalmPilot

These days, a cell phone is less a phone and more an incredibly small and powerful computer that happens to make phone calls. Back in the ’90s, however, the concept of a computer in the pocket was considered far-fetched—that is, until the PalmPilot was launched.

In 1996, the original PalmPilot Personal Digital Assistant was released. Consumers marveled at its incredible capabilities, which seem antiquated compared to what’s available today. The original Palms didn’t have backlit screens and were limited by a maximum of 512 KB of RAM and serial communications ports.

Although these devices were comparably archaic, they were technological marvels for the time. The public ate them up. PalmPilots made it possible to organize schedules, send and receive email (eventually), send things to printers, and take notes. So they were highly valued in the world of business.

The company survived into the 21st century, but Palm technology was quickly surpassed by advancements in smartphones. HP acquired Palm in 2010 but destroyed it by 2011.

Then HP sold the Palm trademark to Chinese conglomerate TCL. They’re trying to revive the Palm brand, but it holds little sway in the marketplace as few people are looking to replace their smartphones with a Palm.^[8]

2 Betamax

Today, with the push of a button, you can watch almost anything at any time. But it wasn’t always like that. Released in 1975, the first product that let a large number of consumers record and watch programs later was the Betamax.

The following year, JVC’s rival format, VHS, was introduced. Even after that happened, Sony’s Betamax technology was the gold standard in video recording and playback. It revolutionized how people consumed television in the 1970s and early ’80s.

As VHS was a competitor, the legendary “videotape format war” broke out between Sony and JVC to determine which would dominate the marketplace. Betamax had superior recording quality with 250 lines vs. VHS’s 240. But in the end, that didn’t matter. Cost became the most important factor.^[9]

Despite being a superior format, Betamax lost the videotape format war simply because the equipment was more expensive. Consumers wanted something more affordable, and that’s what they got in VHS.

Betamax is long since defunct as a recording technology. For a time, though, it was one of the most innovative and important media technologies ever invented since the television. These days, few people under 40 know much about it. But the same could be said of VHS as time goes on.

1 Segway

In 2001, Dean Kamen introduced the world to the Segway, a two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transportation device. The so-called “human transporter” was arguably an incredible invention. It offered a means of commuting within an urban environment in an innovative way.^[10]

The Segway became a pop culture icon almost immediately. It was featured in an episode of South Park and many other shows and movies. Steve Jobs once called it “as big a deal as the PC,” which was high praise coming from him. Later, he retracted his statement by saying the Segway “sucked.”

Still, the Segway was a big deal initially. With its recharge time of four to six hours and a top speed of 16 kilometers per hour (10 mph), it was a handy device. Although the public liked the Segway, it was prohibitively expensive, costing around $5,000 or more for a new unit.

Instead of becoming a new mode of transportation for people in the city, Segways became the new way that security personnel got around. There are also Segway tours in many cities. But the product never managed to become the next personal consumer electronic device. Segway was discontinued in 2020.

10 Accidental Inventions That Changed The World

About The Author: Jonathan is a graphic artist, illustrator, and writer. He is a Retired Soldier and enjoys researching and writing about history, science, theology, and many other subjects.