If Thomas Edison were alive today, he would be celebrating his 165th birthday. Jeremiah Warren made this quick overview of his life and work, so you’ll know more than just “Edison invented the light bulb.” -Thanks, Jeremiah!

Thomas Edison: The Edison Doll and Concrete Homes

Edison had over 2000 patents by the time he died, so it’s not really much of a surprise that among his innovations on the phonograph, the light bulb, the kinetoscope and the telephone, he also had some utter failures as well.

Interestingly, one of his worst failures was actually a great idea that was just too far ahead of its time for the current technology. The Edison Doll was the inventor’s attempt to bring the joy of the phonograph to children. While talking dolls are common place these days and widely loved by little girls around the globe, the problems with the Edison Talking Doll were many. For one thing, phonographs of the time still had to be manually cranked at the appropriate speed in order to play correctly. That’s asking a lot for a child to do with her toy. Another problem was that even when cranked at the proper speed, the doll sounded simply terrible because voice recording still wasn’t very good at the time. In fact, Edison himself admitted “the voices of the little monsters were exceedingly unpleasant to hear.” As if those two issues weren’t bad enough, the mini phonograph inside the doll was incredibly fragile –meaning even if a little girl did manage to play the sound at the right speed and not run away from the shrieking abomination, she’d almost certainly destroy the wax record after only a short amount of play time.

Of course, all the new technology didn’t come cheap and the doll would cost between $10 and $25 depending on the outfit she came in. That’s the equivalent of between $240 and $600 these days, which is a whole lot to spend on a doll that terrifies your daughter and breaks without any effort. Of 2,500 made, only 500 were sold and most of the dolls were returned. With all of these failures, it’s no wonder the doll was only sold for a few short weeks in early 1890. Of course, the rarity of the failure has only increased the doll’s value over the last century. These days, an Edison doll in good condition can easily go for over $15,000 –and that’s without the original phonograph, since most of the excess inventory was sold off without a sound device inside.

The terrible toy doll wasn’t Edison’s only failure though. In fact, his best-known failure was in his push for concrete housing complete with concrete furniture, even concrete pianos. Edison believed these cheap creations would be a good way to solve the housing crisis and allow low-income families to enjoy the finer things in life without spending a fortune. In 1917, he and Charles Ingersoll offered 11 concrete homes (that’s them above) up for sale for only $1,200 –a third of the cost of an average home. Even so, they didn’t manage to sell a single one.

In many ways, this suffered from the same problem as his doll –it was too ahead of its time. After all, concrete is a common element in modern architectural design. Of course, even if concrete homes have become more widely accepted in modern times, the idea of a concrete couch is still not very popular. To be fair, the furniture was constructed of special concrete foam, so it was as light as typical wood furniture and it was shaped and painted to look rather nice. Still, no one talks about the warm glow of concrete like they do about wood.

As for a concrete piano, well, only the outside would be made with his concrete foam, the rest would still be the typical wood and metal guts of ordinary pianos. While it might sound like a terrible idea, Judy Wearing, author of Edison’s Concrete Piano (if you like this article BTW, you really ought to check it out), actually encased her own home piano with concrete only to discover that the sound was actually improved, coming out clearer. As it turns out, maybe Edison was even more ahead of his time than we realize and concrete pianos have yet to find their hay day.

Sources: Neatorama, Edison Tin Foil, Sott

Leonardo Da Vinci: Water-Walking Shoes

(Video Link)

You already know Da Vinci was a brilliant man who invented everything from primitive flying machines to tanks and more, but while you probably already know that many of these concepts, particularly his airplanes and helicopters, you might not have heard of some of his less famous failures –for example, his water-walking shoes. The basic idea was to use inflated shoes that look sort of like water skis and a set of ski poles with inflated tips to walk across the water in order to invade enemy ships or cross over enemy moats. While tanks and planes have since become a reality, the need to walk on water has become less and less important over the centuries.

Regardless of the functionality, the shoes have a serious problem, even when they do actually keep the water-walker afloat. Namely, it’s near impossible to actually walk across water on these things no matter how good your balance and even if you can get going, you’re still going to look pretty darn silly. The shoes certainly aren’t silent or stealthy enough to be useful in a surprise invasion nor are they steady enough to use while fighting, rendering them useless as a military apparatus as Da Vinci intended.

Source: Museo di Leonardo Da Vinci

Gunpei Yokoi: The Virtual Boy

If you enjoyed mobile gaming back in the nineties, then you probably had a Game Boy and if you loved your portable Nintendo system, then you had one man to thank – Gunpei Yokoi, the Nintendo employee who created the device and helped Mario evolve from a lowly plumber to a fire-ball-shooting hero. Yokoi also worked on the beloved Metroid and Kid Icarus franchises.

While the game designer and inventor was responsible for some of the most legendary Nintendo creations, he was also at fault for what is still largely considered the company’s biggest failure to date –The Virtual Boy. The console was intended to be the first system that offered 3D graphics out of the box, but users were just not into the idea of strapping a screen to their face just to play their favorite game. The device was also considered to be utterly hideous and even after price cut after price cut, users still refused to buy the item. Nintendo blamed Yokoi for the failure and he left the company shortly after although some argue that it was unrelated to the Virtual Boy disaster.

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2

Clive Sinclair: Mini Television

Sir Clive Sinclair may not be as famous as some of the other names on this list, but he actually had a huge impact on modern technology. He invented the first slim-line electronic pocket calculator, the first mass market computer sold in the UK for under £100, a fold-up bicycle and more. While his electronic vehicle released in 1985 was considered a commercial failure, it was at least an innovation in the right direction. His miniature television released in 1977 was a different story in failure.

The so-called “pocket television” was revolutionary for the time, given that ordinary televisions would often weigh more than 100 pounds. Upon announcement of its release, the public was thrilled about the concept of a portable television. Even so, Sinclair’s brick-sized invention was hardly practical and didn’t even fit in most people’s pockets. The screen was so tiny it was nearly impossible to see what was actually happening on your favorite show. As if that weren’t bad enough, reception for the tiny television set wasn’t exactly great, even when sitting in one place at your own home.  Sure a lot of people still complain about the tiny screens on their smart phones, but at least the video looks clean and the reception generally is good and that’s more than anyone could say about their pocket TV.

Source: Wikipedia, BBC

There are plenty of bad inventions out there, but let’s face it, most of them aren’t exactly made by the top minds of their time. That being said, even the best inventors have to fail here and there and I certainly didn’t have enough room to include all the terrible inventions by clever innovators, so if you have any other stories of terrible inventions by people known for their great creations, feel free to share them in the comments.

Dotts’s Egg-Opener

Detail from the patent for Dotts’s improved egg-opener.

Be it known that I, HIRAM S. DOTTS, a citizen of the United States, residing at Thoburn, in the county of Marion, State of West Virginia, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Egg-Openers, of which the following is a specification.

So begins the text to U.S. patent #696,016, granted March 25, 1902 to Hiram S. Dotts. Mr. Dotts’s description, despite dealing with a subject of great technical complexity, is nearly poetical. Dotts (and/or his lawyer, E.B. Stocking) reduces the device, and its place in the world, to just 41 words:

This invention relates to egg-openers, and to particularly to a construction embodying jaws movable in their relation to each other and toward an egg in order to fracture the shell thereof upon a peripheral line extending in a single horizontal plane.

Dotts’s Cigar-Tip-Protecting-Label Innovation

Detail from the patent for Dotts’s improved cigar-tip-protecting-label technology.

Just over thirteen years later, on December 7, 1915, Dotts received a patent for a device in an almost wholly different field of endeavor. In his words (and/or those of his attorney, E.B. Stocking):

Be it known that I, HIRAM S. DOTTS, a citizen of the United States, residing at Marianna, in the county of Washington and State of Pennsylvania, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Cigar-Tip-Protecting Labels, of which the following is a specification, reference being had therein to the accompanying drawing.

This invention relates to certain new and useful improvements in cigar tip-protecting labels, the object being to provide a combination tip protector and label so constructed that the label will be held in position on the cigar by the tip protector.

Dotts’s Legacy

However well Dotts was known to the public during his lifetime, his fame is now surpassed by that of other inventors, many of whom knew or know little or nothing firsthand about how to make improvements on egg-openers or cigar-tip-protecting-labels. It is possible that readers of this article will rectify or perpetuate this state of affairs.

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The article above is from the September-October 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

Sometime during the 1930s, tinkerer Joseph B. Friedman watched his young daughter struggle to drink a milkshake from a high counter at a soda shop. There had to be a way to improve the design to make it flexible. Here’s what he did:

Friedman inserted a screw into the straw toward the top (see image). Then he wrapped dental floss around the paper, tracing grooves made by the inserted screw. Finally, he removed the screw, leaving a accordion-like ridge in the middle of the once-straight straw. Voila! he had created a straw that could bend around its grooves to reach a child’s face over the edge of a glass.

The modern bendy straw was born. The plastic would come later. The “crazy” straw — you know, the one that lets you watch the liquid ride a small roller coaster in plastic before reaching your mouth — would come later, too. But the the game-changing invention had been made. In 1939, Friedman founded Flex-Straw Company. By the 1940s, he was manufacturing flex-straws with his own custom-built machines. His first sale didn’t go to a restaurant, but rather to a hospital, where glass tubes still ruled. Nurses realized that bendy straws could help bed-ridden patients drink while lying down.

Link | Photo: Flickr user matsber

Steampunk as a fashion trend might be fading away, but steampunk inspired inventions and designs will never die. Matt Armstrong brings his version of steampunk inspired design to these LEGO brick sculptures, and the resulting inventions/artworks are quite handsome looking indeed. With classic designs, simplistic retro flair, and the look of full functionality, this is how you put the bricks to good use!

Link –via DesignTAXI

Here’s a nifty little gallery of items from Tokyo Design Week 2011, including the glasses shown above, which were made out of sugar crystals which were formed naturally then reproduced in plastic via 3d printer.

Art and innovation collide in these interesting items, and some may even make their way into a store near you. Others, like the tusk inspired headgear or the strange knit yellow suit with duck hat, probably won’t make it out of Japan. Thank your lucky stars!

Link

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m a sucker for articles with funny patents and this Life article quickly drew me in with these delightful chicken spectacles. There are 40 more for those of you looking for a great laugh at terrible inventions.

Link

Few inventors contributed more to advances in science and engineering in the early 20th century than Nikola Tesla. As one of the Fathers of Electricity, Tesla did groundbreaking work on alternating current (AC) power system, electromagnetism, hydroelectric power, radio, and radar to name a few. Many of his inventions (Tesla obtained some 300 patents in his lifetime) became the stuff we take for granted today: when we flip a switch to turn on the light, we owe a lot of that electrical magic to Tesla.

As fate would have it, Tesla, one of the world’s greatest inventors, died penniless and in obscurity. Even today, many people mistakenly attribute many of his inventions to others (Edison, for example, is in the name of many power companies in the United States – ironically, they use the AC system devised by Tesla rather than the more inefficient direct current or DC system espoused by Thomas Edison; Tesla also invented the fundamentals of radio transmissions before Gugliegmo Marconi).

Today, there’s quite a bit of resurgence in Tesla’s popularity, which is helped in part by his mystique as a “mad scientist.” Amongst his more outlandish ideas, Tesla worked on death rays to knock out enemy airplanes out of the skies, pocket-sized resonance machine that could topple buildings, ways to send electricity through the upper atmosphere, force-fields to protect cities, and so on.

Read the story of Tesla’s life and inventions, along with plenty of photographs, in an excerpt from the book Tesla: Master of Lightning by Margaret Cheney and Robert Uth. Link

Did you ever order Sea Monkeys from an ad in the back of a comic book? The man behind the “Bowlfull of Happiness” was Harold von Braunhut, who’s life was so much more than sea monkeys.

The accounts Von Braunhut gave of his adventures in American kitsch are consistently winning. Granted, he makes some claims that a skeptic is inclined to independently confirm. At some point in the years after he raced motorcycles as The Green Hornet, von Braunhut worked as a talent agent of sorts. He tells Planet X about a stunt performer he used to manage—the article has von Braunhut calling him “a fella by the name of Henry Lamore”—who would dive from a height of 40 feet into a kiddie pool filled with 12 inches of water. I began to lose faith while trying to verify this doozy, but it turns out that the Internet allows you to watch a man named Henri LaMothe still pulling off this feat at 71 years old, as an opening act for Evel Knievel.

As anyone sold by the Sea-Monkey ads could tell you, it was hard to say exactly where von Braunhut was walking on the terrain between truth, embellishment and con. That was his gift. He convinced us to look at the jazz hands and lose sight of the footwork. Von Braunhut’s inventions were not quite what they seemed to be. Neither was he.

Von Braunhut was best known for his Sea Monkeys, but it was only one of his 195 patents. Even more unusual was his association with the Aryan Nation. Link -via Nag on the Lake

Does this remind you of a certain Imperial Walker from the movie The Empire Strikes Back? In 1962, General Electric conceived the Cybernetic Anthropmorophous Machine (CAM), which became known as the Walking Truck.

The Army liked what GE had been testing and awarded a contract for building the experimental vehicle in 1966, a year after America began sending troops to Vietnam. But the same super-sensitive, hand-and-foot-controlled hydraulics that enabled the CAM to casually push aside a jeep, or gently paw a GE light bulb without breaking it, also made it impractical for prolonged battlefield use. Operators found the constant manipulation of the controls very fatiguing, leading the project to be mothballed.

In additional to the fictional AT-AT, this reminds us of BigDog from Boston Dynamics. See more pictures of the CAM at GE Reports. Link

John D. Humphrey patented this device in 1919. It’s an alarm clock. Oh, it doesn’t cook bacon or toss you out of bed, but it’ll get the point across. Assuming that s/he’s correctly positioned, a metal rod slaps the user’s head. Link and Patent Info -via Say Uncle

You think you have weird stuff in your attic, imagine if you were a 130 year old company who is responsible in part for some of the world’s greatest inventions. The company has released a gallery of photographs that illustrate some lost but not forgotten gadgets including a 100 year old car charger and early solar cells.

GE called on photographer Hans Gissinger to shoot items from GE’s archives as well as more modern projects being worked on right now. Most of these items are stored in GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York, near Schenectady, though they plan to head to other manufacturing plants across the country to capture the goodies stored elsewhere.

Link

How Toilet Paper Got on a Roll

The first products designed specifically to wipe one’s nethers were aloe-infused sheets of manila hemp dispensed from Kleenex-like boxes. They were invented in 1857 by a New York entrepreneur named Joseph Gayetty, who claimed his sheets prevented hemorrhoids. Gayetty was so proud of his therapeutic bathroom paper that he had his name printed on each sheet. But his success was limited. Americans soon grew accustomed to wiping with the Sears Roebuck catalog, and they saw no need to spend money on something that came in the mail for free.

Toilet paper took its next leap forward in 1890, when two brothers named Clarence and E. Irvin Scott popularized the concept of toilet paper on a roll. The Scotts’ brand became more successful than Gayetty’s medicated wipes, in part because they built a steady trade selling toilet paper to hotels and drugstores. But it was still an uphill battle to get the public to openly buy the product, largely because Americans remained embarrassed by bodily functions. In fact, the Scott brothers were so ashamed of the nature of their work that they didn’t take proper credit for their innovation until 1902.

“No one wanted to ask for it by name,” says Dave Praeger, author of Poop Culture: How America Is Shaped by Its Grossest National Product. “It was so taboo that you couldn’t even talk about the product.” By 1930, the German paper company Hakle began using the tag line, “Ask for a roll of Hakle and you won’t have to say toilet paper!”

As time passed, toilet tissues slowly became an American staple. But widespread acceptance of the product didn’t officially occur until a new technology demanded it. At the end of the 19th century, more and more homes were being built with sit-down flush toilets tied to indoor plumbing systems. And because people required a product that could be flushed away with minimal damage to the pipes, corncobs and moss no longer cut it. In no time, toilet paper ads boasted that the product was recommended by both doctors and plumbers.

The Strength of Going Soft

In the early 1900s, toilet paper was still being marketed as a medicinal item. But in 1928, the Hoberg Paper Company tried a different tack. On the advice of its ad men, the company introduced a brand called Charmin and fitted the product with a feminine logo that depicted a beautiful woman. The genius of the campaign was that by evincing softness and femininity, the company could avoid talking about toilet paper’s actual purpose. Charmin was enormously successful, and the tactic helped the brand survive the Great Depression. (It also helped that, in 1932, Charmin began marketing economy-size packs of four rolls.) Decades later, the dainty ladies were replaced with babies and bear cubs—advertising vehicles that still stock the aisles today.

By the 1970s, America could no longer conceive of life without toilet paper. Case in point: In December 1973, Tonight Show host Johnny Carson joked about a toilet paper shortage during his opening monologue. But America didn’t laugh. Instead, TV watchers across the country ran out to their local grocery stores and bought up as much of the stuff as they could. In 1978, a TV Guide poll named Mr. Whipple—the affable grocer who implored customers, “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin”—the third best-known man in America, behind former President Richard Nixon and the Rev. Billy Graham.

Rolling the World

Currently, the United States spends more than $6 billion a year on toilet tissue—more than any other nation in the world. Americans, on average, use 57 squares a day and 50 lbs. a year. Even still, the toilet paper market in the United States has largely plateaued. The real growth in the industry is happening in developing countries. There, it’s booming. Toilet paper revenues in Brazil alone have more than doubled since 2004. The radical upswing in sales is believed to be driven by a combination of changing demographics, social expectations, and disposable income.

“The spread of globalization can kind of be measured by the spread of Western bathroom practices,” says Praeger. When average citizens in a country start buying toilet paper, wealth and consumerism have arrived. It signifies that people not only have extra cash to spend, but they’ve also come under the influence of Western marketing.

America Without Toilet Paper

Even as the markets boom in developing nations, toilet paper manufacturers find themselves needing to charge more per roll to make a profit. That’s because production costs are rising. During the past few years, pulp has become more expensive, energy costs are rising, and even water is becoming scarce. Toilet paper companies may need to keep hiking up their prices. The question is, if toilet paper becomes a luxury item, can Americans live without it?

The truth is that we did live without it, for a very long time. And even now, a lot of people do. In Japan, the Washlet—a toilet that comes equipped with a bidet and an air-blower—is growing increasingly popular. And all over the world, water remains one of the most common methods of self-cleaning. Many places in India, the Middle East, and Asia, for instance, still depend on a bucket and a spigot. But as our economy continues to circle the drain, will Americans part with their beloved toilet paper in order to adopt more money-saving measures? Or will we keep flushing our cash away? Praeger, for one, believes a toilet-paper apocalypse is hardly likely. After all, the American marketing machine is a powerful thing.

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The article above, written by Linda Rodriguez, is reprinted with permission from the Jul/Aug 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

Marie Curie

Perhaps the most influential inventor on this list is Maria Sklodowska-Curie. Maria co-discovered both radium and polonium and revolutionized modern chemistry when she discovered a method to isolate radioactive isotopes. She was so well-respected that she became the first female professor at the University of Paris. If that weren’t impressive enough, she was not only the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, she was also the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes. Even the word “radioactive” was her creation.

Unfortunately, being one of the first researchers to work with radioactive particles, she did not understand the dangers they presented to the human body. Most of her work was carried out in a shed without any protective measures whatsoever. Eventually, she died from aplastic anemia caused by extensive exposure to ionized radiation that emanated from her research materials.

Her shed has now been converted to a museum, but her paperwork, even her cookbook, is so radioactive that they are too dangerous to handle without protective gear and are stored in lead-lined boxes.

Horace Lawson Hunley

Horace had a number of careers, serving as a legislator, a lawyer and a confederate marine engineer in his short 40 years, but it was his role as a marine engineer that he will be best remembered for. Horace was the inventor of the first combat submarine. His creation, the H.L. Hunley, was known to be dangerous after five out of nine crew members died on the device’s first run in an attempt to attack the Union blockade in the Charleston Harbor, but that didn’t stop the inventor or the confederacy from investing more time and manpower into the device.

Like any good inventor, Horace knew he couldn’t quit. He kept working on the sub and was so willing to stand by his work that he served on the second run to attack the blockade. Again the sub sank, this time killing all eight crew members, including Horace.

Determined not to give up, the confederates recovered the sub and made a third attempt to attack the blockade. This time they were successful and Horace’s invention went down in history for being the first sub to bring down an enemy ship. Unfortunately for the crew, the sub still wasn’t safe and it sank shortly after the attack, without even being struck, and all nine crew members died.

This time, the Hunley was allowed to stay underwater. Lost for 132 years, the sub was eventually discovered just outside of Charleston Harbor in the middle of the Atlantic.

Li Si

You may have heard the rumors that Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was killed by his own invention, the guillotine, but as it turns out, he not only died from natural causes, he didn’t even invent the guillotine. He simply served on a panel that had set out to develop a more humane way to execute criminals. Guillotin suggested a simple device that would behead the victim quickly and painlessly, paving the way for the invention paving his namesake.

On the opposite side of the spectrum though, was Li Si, a Prime Minister who served under the first emperor of China. Li Si wrote many of the state’s policies and invented one of its most cruel execution methods, The Five Pains. This torture method involved cutting off the victim’s nose, then one of his hands, then one of his feet, then his manhood, and finally, the man would be cut in half at the waist. He would then be left to suffer until he finally bled to death.

After the first emperor passed on, his son took over and Li Si faithfully served him, until he died. Li Si knew he would have lost position as Prime Minister, so he manipulated the emperor’s chosen successor into killing himself. Unfortunately for Li Si, his accomplice in the act quickly turned on him and had him charged with treason. Li Si was executed using his own devious method, The Five Pains.

John Godfrey Parry-Thomas

Both a race-car driver and an engineer, John Godfrey Parry-Thomas was in a unique position to attempt to beat the land speed record. He was quite the talented engineer and he was able to rebuild a car to be powered by a Liberty V-12 aero-engine. He also added a number of his own modifications, including his own piston designs and chains attaching the wheels directly to the engine. By the time he was done, he had the first car ever dedicated exclusively to beating the land speed record, rather than just racing in the auto circuit.

His car, Babs, was a success. On April 27, 1926, John beat the existing land speed record. The next day, he came back to break his own record, locking in an impressive 170 mph speed. A year later, the previous record holder reclaimed the record, so John set out to beat him again.

Babs was a fast car, but it wasn’t the safest design. For one thing, the high engine cover required the driver to lean to one side to be able to see. For another, the external chains could easily get caught on something or, if broken, they could fly off in any direction. Unfortunately for John, the later problem occurred when the car was going 170 mph. Because John’s head was tilted off to the same side, the chain ended up smacking him in the head, killing him instantly. John went down in history not as a one-time land speed record holder or a talented engineer, but as the first driver to be killed in pursuit of the land speed record.

Aurel Vlaicu

Aurel started his career working in a Romanian car factory, but the engineer’s true passion was flight. In 1909, he built his first glider and a year later, he flew his first invention, the Vlaicu I airplane. He continued to work on the design and he and his Vlaicu II model won awards for precise landing, projectile throwing and tight flying in the Aspern Air Show in Vienna.

While working on his newest development, the Vlaicu III, Aurel took a trip to Transylvania in his aged second-generation plane. While he was flying over the Carpathian Mountains, the plane lost its wing and Aurel died in the crash.

After his death, Aurel’s friends completed the Vlaicu III, but though it was taken on a few short test runs, no one could extensively test the plane’s capabilities because Aurel’s control system was too strange for anyone else to figure out all the way. Eventually, the Nazi’s seized the plane during their occupation of Budapest and it was lost at some point during the war.

Romania was proud of their native notable aviation engineer though and the Bucharest airport, the second busiest in the country, is now named after him.

Sources: The Atlantic, Discovery, Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6

In theory this sounds like a great idea. Post an idea and you get an idea back. Freedom of the exchange of information, that’s what the internet is for right? However I could see this posing some problems when someone’s brilliant million dollar idea gets posted on TheIdeaSwap.com.

The Idea Swap lets you take those ideas you got that really didn’t come to any use, and exchange them with actual ideas from other people.

Link

Wright spent over a year experimenting with different combinations of chemical compounds, hoping to produce a synthetic, “hard rubber” silicone that could withstand the high heat of jet engines or the freezing cold of nights on Navy ships. Towards the end of the summer in 1943, he and his team tried adding boron nitride as filler to an experimental silicone compound. But the scientists then learned that the substance they thought was boron nitride was actually a mixture of other chemical compounds, including boric acid. So they tried adding just boric acid.

The rest, as they say, is history. The resulting substance was gooey, not hard. Frustrated, Wright threw the goop onto the floor and to his surprise, it bounced right back up at him. A reporter from the Saturday Evening Post described the scene in a story (which, alas, is not online): “‘Golly,’ the scientist exclaimed as he dropped a ball of silicone putty, ‘look at it bounce!’”

They weren’t sure what to do with the stuff, but they had fun playing with it. Read how this mistake became the classic putty toy we all know and love. Link

In the 1950s, nuclear power was seen as the answer to everything. Engineers were working on nuclear powered planes, automobiles, and trains, and searching for other ways to use the power of the atom. Read about some of the inventions that seem far-fetched today, but were just on the horizon at one time, at Dark Roasted Blend. Link

Alexander Graham Bell is best known for his work on the telephone, but that was far from his only interest. The Library of Congress preserved Bell’s handwritten notes and sketchbooks for our perusal. They are filled with ideas and experiments, although the handwriting is, to put it kindly, sometimes hard to decipher. The Atlantic has a gallery of some of the more interesting sketches, like this airplane that resembles a Sierpinski triangle.

Link | The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers -via Metafilter

Last time I checked (lie: I never have) people have always been happy with the colour of ketchup. Tomatoes are red. Ketchup, made from tomatoes, is also red. Move on. Heinz, the people who should really know about these things, decided that it would be necessary to bring out green, purple, blue and ‘mystery’ coloured ketchup turning a popular sauce into a terrifying experiment. Children and the colour-blind were nonplussed. The rest of humanity wept.

Read about these and more, and be glad these things are not on your menu today. Link -Thanks,  Ben!

Want your child to turn that frown upside down? By any means necessary? This feels like it belongs on Arrested Development, alongside the injury-inducing cornballer, but amazingly enough it’s a real thing. And there’s only a “slight twitch side effect!” Hooray for science!

This new invention just hooks on your child’s ears like glasses while another portion fits snuggly under the chin. Ok so what is the twist? How about electro shock treatment? Yes the portion under the chin sends a constant pulse of electricity through your child’s cheeks.

Set the electro smile unit on high and snap that smile right into place, no more worries about grandma feeling the kids are not happy to see her. The sudden jolt of electricity in the jaw muscles forces the child to smile with complete body excitement giving grandma the appearance the kids have really missed her.

Link

Now, the Nonmuseum has hundreds of useless items on display, and has just celebrated its 100,000th visitor. Among the many eccentric inventions of this unusual museum, you can find a Portable Anonymizer that’s supposed to keep your identity a secret in real life, a foldable  snow sled, a guillotine for finger nails, and even a Champagne Cork Catcher – a device that keeps the cork from flying away when you pop open the bottle.

The object shown, housed at the Nonseum, is the foldable sled. Link -via the Presurfer

AT&T firmly believed that the answering machine, and its magnetic tapes, would lead the public to abandon the telephone.

More precisely, in Bell’s imagination, the very knowledge that it was possible to record a conversation would ” greatly restrict the use of the telephone,” with catastrophic consequences for its business. Businessmen, for instance, the theory supposed, might fear the potential use of a recorded conversation to undo a written contract. Tape recorders would also inhibit discussing obscene or ethically dubious matters. In sum, the very possibility of magnetic recording, it was feared, would ” change the whole nature of telephone conversations” and ” render the telephone much less satisfactory and useful in the vast majority of cases in which it is employed.”[...]

Link | Photo by Flickr user Tom Raftery used under Creative Commons license

Every year, the editors of Popular Science compile a list of what they believe to be the 100 greatest technological innovations of the past year. This time, the #1 slot went to the Groasis Waterboxx. It’s a plant incubator that reduces the need for irrigation:

The Waterboxx, shaped more like a doughnut than a box, helps plants survive long enough to make it through that layer of dry soil. Place the tub around a freshly planted seedling, and fill the evaporation-proof basin—just once—with four gallons of water.

The Waterboxx does the rest. At night, its top cools faster than the air, collecting condensation to supplement those initial gallons. The tub drips about three tablespoons of water a day into the soil, sustaining the plant while encouraging its roots to grow deeper in search of more water. Once the plant reaches the moist soil layer, usually after a year, the farmer lifts the box off the plant and reuses it on the next sapling. Each Waterboxx is expected to last 10 years, and, for about a buck or two per tree grown, is cheap enough to use in poor nations.

At the link, you can view the complete list of 100 innovations divided into 11 categories.

Link via First Things | Photo: Popular Science

Railroads reduced travel time to days; airplanes to hours. But in today’s fast-paced world, time-savers are measured in minutes and seconds. Behold the arrival of “Selfy,” the bed that makes itself, which reportedly saves you a full 15 seconds a day. That adds up to 105 seconds a week, or 98 minutes a year -precisely the length of time you would need to watch the 1986 film Short Circuit, starring Steve Guttenberg and Ally Sheedy. See how Selfy helps you make the most of your time?

Dust Mop Slippers

Dust mop slippers are booties with cotton fibers on their soles that are designed to pick up any dirt or dust collecting on your floor. (We’re guessing your floors are pretty filthy if you’re the type to buy this sort of thing.) Curiously, getting drunk may actually leave your apartment in better shape.

The Pet Petter

(YouTube link)

For 20- and 30-somethings, caring for a dog is often a meaningful step toward parenthood. But saddled with long and inflexible work hours, many in this age group just don’t have the time. That’s where the Pet Petter comes in. Developed by Kentuckian Anthony Steffen, the Pet Petter literally lends dog owners a helping hand. As a robotic arm swings back and forth, the contraption will coo sweet nothings into your doggie’s ear.

The Cruzin Cooler

Beer, the muse of lazy technology, must have inspired the Cruzin Cooler, a motorized scooter attached to a cooler. In their mission statement, the inventors claim that the cooler “combines two basic necessities of life: the ability to have cold food or a beverage handy along with the means to get somewhere, without walking.” You might be wondering, wouldn’t a device like this encourage drinking and driving? It’s likely. In June 2008, a man driving a Cruzin Cooler in New York was arrested and charged with DWI.

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The article above, written by Adam Rosen, is reprinted with permission from Scatterbrained section of the Mar/Apr 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

You probably think that – along with Twister and concept albums – the oral contraceptive pill was one of the great inventions of the swinging sixties. In fact, it was a product of the more famously staid and conservative fifties. Developed by a team of biologists led by Gregory Pincus, it was first tested in Puerto Rico April 1956. The Food and Drug Administration did not approve the marketing of the pill until 1960, just in time for it to be a symbol of sixties freedom.

Read about four other events that also turned out to be very newsworthy …much later. Link

The flux capacitor, the core component of a machine that allowed Brown to travel through time. Brown came up with the idea of the capacitor on November 5, 1955, and worked tirelessly for the next 30 years developing it into a working time machine. The capacitor, which requires 1.21 Gigawatts of electrical power to function, was first implemented in a customized DeLorean and later, or maybe earlier?, in a 19th century train.

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Yes, this is an image from an actual patent filed by Edward L. Van Halen on 30 July, 1985. Here’s what it’s for:

A supporting device for stringed musical instruments, for example, guitars, banjos, mandolins and the like, is disclosed. The supporting device is constructed and arranged for supporting the musical instrument on the player to permit total freedom of the player’s hands to play the instrument in a completely new way, thus allowing the player to create new techniques and sounds previously unknown to any player. The device, when in its operational position, has a plate which rests upon the player’s leg leaving both hands free to explore the musical instrument as never before. Because the musical instrument is arranged perpendicular to the player’s body, the player has maximum visibility of the instrument’s entire playing surface.

Link via Lowering the Bar | Image: US Patent Office

We can always dream up new products that make life easier, no matter how difficult they would be to actually produce. In 1939, Popular Science predicted that we would one day received newspapers printed at home with data transferred by radio broadcasts. That particular invention never came to be, at least in the sense it was envisioned at the time. Why print out the news when you can just read it on your computer screen? This item is one of nine products that were never developed, although some of the end results came to us by other inventions. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

Australian inventors Brendan Corry and Peter Sargent designed the Wunda Weeder. This fanciful garden gadget is self-propelled, thanks to the solar cells on the roof. A gardener can lay on the cot and weed rows of plants in his/her garden while staying cool in the shade.

Link via OhGizmo! | Photo: Wunda Products

It doesn’t matter how popular they are, they’re still pretty ugly. The footwear, introduced in 2002, mostly takes the form of rubber clogs, but has seen transformation into high heels and loafers. The company also announced April 26 it would start making ballet flats. “If we make it a little bit more stylish, then we start to appeal to a larger audience,” said the company’s CEO. Which means they just might be attractive enough to do your laundry in.

What would you add to the list?

Link via io9 | Photo: David Silverman/Getty Images

Henry David Thoreau, of all people, invented raisin bread when he tossed a handful into the dough he was baking while at Walden Pond. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but the addition of the shriveled little grapes is said to have just stunned and scandalized the housewives of Concord, Massachusetts, who were used to doing their baking in a very particular manner. I bet their minds would be blown by cinnamon raisin bread. Photo from Food Channel.

Marlon Brando: actor, icon… inventor? Yup. Toward the end of his life, Brando received several patents all related to a device that would help musicians tune drumheads. Why? Your guess is as good as mine – the patents all stemmed from 2002-2004, and when he died in 2004, he presumably took the idea with him.

Zeppo Marx owned a company that made industrial clamps and straps that were used quite heavily during WWII – the Marman Clamp was actually used to hold the atomic bombs carried by the Enola Gay. But Marx himself held three patents – one for a “Vapor Delivery Pad for Delivering Moist Heat” and two related to a device that monitored heart rates. And actually, Gummo Marx had a patent too – it was for a “Packaging Rack.”

Sir Isaac Newton was undoubtedly a genius with many discoveries and inventions to his name. Where do you think the cat flap ranks on his list of accomplishments? Rumor has it that Newton invented the cat flap when his beloved pet kept nudging the door to his lab open while he was working on light experiments, ruining hours of work. But he loved his cat and didn’t want to shut her out of his lab – or trap her inside. The solution? He cut a hole in the door, then installed a piece of felt at the stop so the least amount of light possible would seep through. Allegedly, when the cat had kittens, he cut a smaller door for them to go through even though they easily could have gone through the larger door. However, take this story with a grain of salt – at least two Newton biographers have done extensive research on the man’s life that turned up no trace of a pet of any kind. Photo from DIY Happy.

What’s a parent to do when their helpless infant is suffering after a terrible accident? Well, if you’re Roald Dahl, you team up with a couple of other guys to invent a brain shunt to ease the pain. Dahl’s son Theo was happily sitting in his baby carriage when it was hit by a taxi cab, severely injuring the infant and causing water to pool on his brain. The current device that helped drain the fluid was unreliable; it often jammed and was known to cause blindness. So Dahl partnered with a hydraulic engineer and a neurosurgeon to come up with a better solution – the Wade-Dahl-Till valve. His son had recovered by the time the valve was complete, but it served others well. The three men responsible for the valve all agreed that they would never accept payment for the invention.

Mark Twain has three patents to his name, but he was mostly a wannabe inventor. He was fascinated by inventions and gadgets and invested a lot of money in unknown inventors in hopes that his investments would make him quite rich. None of them ever panned out, though, and he eventually declared bankruptcy. But back to Twain’s patents – they were quite diverse. The first was granted in 1871 and was called “Improvement in adjustable and detachable straps for garments.” The strap tightened shirts up at the waist; the idea was to replace cumbersome suspenders. He also held a somewhat successful patent for a self-pasting scrapbook that ended up earning him about $50,000. And in 1885, he filed a patent for a history trivia game. It should come as no surprise that the author wrote about his ventures – you can read about the creation of the strap here.

Margaret Thatcher – yes, the ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – helped invent soft serve ice cream. I’m not sure if I should be thankful or not. After Maggie graduated from Oxford in 1950, she went to work for J. Lyons and Co., a British restaurant and food manufacturing company. The team she worked on developed a way to whip air into ice cream, leaving it lighter and creamier than existing ice cream. The result? Soft serve. Yum. Photo from Carvel Brentwood.

Engineer Scott Amron has a clever invention. It’s a heat sleeve for a cup that expands when hot liquid poured into is so that the drinker has additional protection from the heat.

Other Amron inventions that we’ve featured at Neatorama include a keyring/key, leather band-aids, and an art exhibit for which Amron plugged non-electrical objects into electrical appliances.

Link via Gizmodo

He Wasn’t Always Alexander Graham Bell

At first, he was just Alexander Bell. When he turned ten though, he begged his parents to give him a middle name like they had given to each of his brothers. It wasn’t until his 11^th birthday that the famous “Graham” was added to his name. His father chose the name in honor of a family friend, Alexander Graham, who had boarded with the family.

Of course, his family continued to just call him “Aleck” throughout his life. When he was married to his wife (seen with him in the above image) though, she insisted that he begin calling himself “Alec” and from that point on, he started signing his name as “Alec Bell.”

He Was Born Into His Line Of Work

Alexander’s entire family was tied in with the fields of elocution and speech. His father and grandfather (both of whom were also named Alexander Bell) worked in the field before Alec was born, and his brother also started working in the science. Additionally, both his mother and wife were deaf, which gave him even more reason to be dedicated to easing systems of communication.

Even as a kid, Bell was fascinated with sound and he taught himself both ventriloquism and piano without any training.

Aleck Started Inventing Young

He finished his first invention, a dehusking device for a flour mill, when he was only 12. When his best friend, Ben Herdman, told him about the laborious process of dehusking at his parent’s flour mill, Bell quickly threw together a machine that combined rotating paddles with nail brushes. The mill used the machine for years to come and the boy’s father was so impressed that he gave the two boys complete access to a workshop in the mill so they could continue to work on inventions.

Despite His Brilliance, He Wasn’t Big On School

When Bell entered the Royal High School, he was known for having bad grades and a history of absenteeism. He excelled at science, but remained indifferent to all other courses. Eventually, he dropped out at only 15 and then moved to London, where he lived with his grandfather, who was able to finally get Bell interested in learning.

It paid off too. Before he invented the phone, Bell was a teacher. He used his father’s teaching system to educate deaf students. One of his most famous students was Hellen Keller, who once said that Bell had dedicated his life to breaking through the “inhuman silence which separates and estranges.”

Later in his life, he earned a series of honorary degrees from quite a few colleges, including Harvard, Dartmouth, the University of Edinburg in Scotland, the University of Würzburg in Bavaria and more.

The Road to Creation

Bell’s first work with what would later result in the invention of the telephone started when he was hired, along with Elisha Gray, to help find a way to send multiple telegraph messages along the same line. A few years later, he approached the director of the Smithsonian Institute, Joseph Henry, for his advice on an apparatus that would enable the human voice to travel via telegraph. Bell said he was worried he didn’t have the right knowledge to do it though and Henry inspired him by merely replying, “get it!”

Bell May Not Actually Be The Inventor of the Telephone

At the same time that Bell was working on his idea, the other man hired, on the telegraph project Elisha Gray (seen at left) had also been inspired to find a way to transmit speech through the telegraph. He filed a design for an acoustic telegraph that sent vocal transmissions through water the same day that Bell’s lawyer filed a patent for his telephone device.

Aleck hadn’t actually gotten his phone working before he filed his patent. Three days after he was issued the patent, he used a liquid transmitter –just like the one Gray had designed, to get the device to work. He only used the water design as part of an experiment and never used the liquid transmitter in his demonstrations or commercial products, but he is still, to this day, accused of stealing the phone from Gray.

A man that worked at the patent office later swore in an affidavit that he had shown Gray’s patent to Bell’s attorney in an effort to pay off part of the debt he owed him. He also claimed that he showed the patent to Bell a few days later and that he was given $100 in return. While Alexander admitted that he learned some of the technical details from Gray’s patent, he swore that he had never paid the patent office employee, Zenas Fisk Wilber, any money.

Bad Business Calls

After Bell finished his work on the telephone, he offered to sell the patent for the device to Western Union for $100,000. The president of the company refused, claiming that the telephone was nothing more than a toy. Two years later, he changed his mind, saying he would consider it a bargain if he could buy the patent for $25 million. Of course, by that point, the Bell Telephone Company was not interested in selling the patent.

Continued Invention Theft Accusations

Throughout the years, the Bell company continued to make improvements on the telephone, even buying Edison’s carbon microphone in 1879. Unfortunately, quite a few inventors had started to work on improving the phone by this point and in only 18 years, the company had to fight over 600 lawsuits over legal rights to the patent. Fortunately, the fact that Alec had been working on sound and speech for his entire life gave him the credibility he needed to fight the lawsuits. Even so, the government moved to annul his patent on grounds of fraud and misrepresentation in 1887, but the Supreme Court ruled in the company’s favor and many other suits were dropped as a result.

Through this entire period, the Bell company never lost a case, but the strain put on Alexander from all these court appearances eventually cause him to resign from the company.

His Work Didn’t Stop With The Telephone

While his most famous invention was the phone, Bell continued to invent throughout his life. He worked on optical telecommunications, hydrofoil planes and aeronautics. In 1880, he created the photophone, which he considered to be his most important invention. This creation would allow sound to pass through a beam of light and was the first wireless phone technology ever created.

By the time he died, he had thirty patents. He had one patent for the phonograph, nine for transportation devices and two for selenium cells. He also invented a metal jacket that was supposed to help with breathing problems, a meter to detect hearing problems, a device to locate icebergs and more.

He invented the first metal detectors, which he used in an attempt to uncover the bullet in President Garfield’s body. Although it worked perfectly in lab tests, it could not help doctors find the bullet, but that was partially because the president was laying on a bed with a metal frame and metal springs that disturbed the instrument and the surgeons refused to move him to a new location.

He Considered His Greatest Invention An Intrusion On His Work

While the telephone was Bell’s best known contribution to society, he considered his real work to be as a scientist and he refused to have a telephone in his study for fear it would intrude on his work.

He Was Far Ahead of His Time

At one point in his career, Bell and his team had considered the idea of pressing a magnetic field onto a record as a way to reproduce sound. While they couldn’t get their idea to work, this same concept was the basic idea behind tapes, hard discs, floppy discs and other media that were invented almost a century later.

Also impressive was Bell’s environmentally-friendly inventions that were developed long before anyone had ever considered the idea of global warming. He worried about the effects of methane gas on the environment and experimented with composting toilets and devices that would capture water from the atmosphere. In an interview shortly before his death, he even mentioned the idea of using solar panels to heat houses.

The End of A Legend

Alexander Graham Bell died in August of 1922. Every phone in North America was said to be silenced during his funeral in his honor.

Sources: AlexanderGrahamBell.org, Idea Finder, Biography.com, The Franklin Institute, American Heritage and Answers.com

While I can certainly see value in this device, I can’t help but think of all those situations where things could go wrong. What do you think readers? A great idea or a huge mistake waiting to happen?

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Pet rocks are way too old school, but not anymore thanks to ThinkGeek’s new USB powered pet rock. The rock with a glued-on USB cord will only run you around $10.

Link Via Foolish Gadgets

Almost all of the inventions are from the sixties or before, so it’s not too shocking that many of them involve cigarettes, including a method for a couple to share a smoke and one for a person to smoke a whole pack at once -oh joy!

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What we now take for granted many people once took for granted could never work.

The lightbulb. The telephone. Email. If you’re a specialist in your field, there are two ways to become a household name: create something new…or claim it can never be done. If you want to be remembered on the Internet, choose the second one. Here are 9 examples of breakthroughs, inventions and innovations the experts were completely wrong about.

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