When the names of people like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison get mentioned, there is no way anyone can thing of some bizarre forgotten inventions. These are the people that gave us things like the electric bulb, electricity, film, and some of the most important things we have today.
It is often said that Rome wasn’t built in a day. This holds true even for famous inventors. Most of them had built one or more inventions that were so ‘bizarre’, they got forgotten. Some built theirs while riding on the glorious success of a good invention. Some others recorded a huge success but only for a short while.
Bizarre Forgotten Inventions
1. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S SWIM FINS
In 1968, Benjamin Franklin also known as ‘The First American” got inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame due to his avid love for swimming. At age 11, he puzzled on ways to become a better swimmer and came up with the idea of swim fins.
So he set to work and made a pair of wooden fins to be worn on the hands. The fins were 25 cm long and 15 cm wide resembling a painter’s pallets. He claimed that the fins improved his swimming speed but caused his wrists excess fatigue. They never made it to the market for these reasons.
2. LEONARDO DA VINCI’S CROSSBOW
The Italian Renaissance polymath is popular for his painting and sculpting amongst others. Regarded as the prime exemplar of the ‘Renaissance Man’, he also has a number of inventions to his name. He invented ‘A Giant Crossbow’ with six wheels for easy mobility. The 25 meters wide weapon was designed for warfare with an aim to scare more opponents than kill them. A Discovery Channel show made a prototype of this invention in 2010.
3. ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
President James Garfield was almost assassinated on July 2, 1881, but survived with a bullet lodged somewhere in his body. Several Medical professionals presented varying ideas and Bell made his own contribution. He built a metal detector, the very first of its kind. The design involved emitting an electromagnetic field which was to make a clicking noise upon contact with a metal.
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The device however made continuous clicking sounds when brought close to President Garfield even after the second round of testing on it. Much later, modern historians agreed that the device might have been valid but obstructed by the metal coils placed in the President’s mattress.
4. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY’S SODA WATER
Joseph Priestley was commonly known as a Philosopher, chemist and Theologian and is credited for the discovery of Oxygen. What he isn’t really known for is the discovery of soda water. At a time in his life, he lived closed to a brewery and made a lot of experiments there. He discovered that water took on the original sour taste of a vat of fermenting beer when placed over it. He reserved this special refreshing drink for himself and his friends until he shared his observations in an article in 1772. He titled it ‘Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air’. In 1783, Johann Jacob Schweppe took his directions and founded his own company, ‘the Schweppes Company’, raking in a lot of fortunes till date.
5. THOMAS EDISON’S TALKING DOLL
Immediately Edison realized that his Phonograph was a huge success, he began to look for ways to use it in more innovations. This led him to making a talking doll. It borrowed a leaf from his Phonogram and it worked. However, it was a commercial failure as only a few copies of it sold for a few weeks in 1890.
6. THOMAS EDISON’S ELECTRIC PEN
This is another invention from one of the world’s best inventors, a successful invention at that. At the age of 28, he made this pen which is reportedly one of his earliest successful inventions. When he noticed the mark left beneath the paper by the stylus of the printing telegraph as it punctured it, he set to work. The result was a duplicating machine fitted with perforated paper for making copies. Charles Batchelor, a fellow Inventor, worked side by side with him on this one.
The electric pen which became ‘the first commercial appliance with an electric motor’ was designed as the main component of the machine. The machine also comprised of an ink-roller and a holder, a stand, a wet-cell battery and a duplicating cast made from cast iron. This pen had a lot of ‘firsts’ to its name as it was also Edison’s first invention to go into mass production. As successful as it was, it went into extinction with the invention of the typewriter.
There are so many stories to tell yet very few words to tell them. Science has obviously evolved over the years and we can only imagine how that invention that is a life saver now, would become outdated someday.
