Today, our world is constantly changing, mostly because of all the technological advancements happening around us. This is exactly one of the reasons why we constantly see new products, goods, services, and inventions on the markets. Though we’re mostly accepting of new things, inventors that lived hundreds of years ago had a lot of issues with people being skeptical of new things.
Inventors that first manufactured certain things such as the light bulb or the telephone were subjected to scrutiny once they revealed their products to the public, however, nowadays, we cannot live without their inventions. And, if you’re interested in learning more about some of the top items that never got the attention they needed, this article can help. So, without further ado, let’s take a look:
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Can You Imagine Life Without Light Bulbs?
If there is one person that you must have heard of, it’s Thomas Edison, a 19th century American who has been given more than 1.000 patents in the US. His most famous creation? The first-ever functional electric light bulb (although it’s worth mentioning that the concept of light bulbs began before Thomas started working on his model).
For us, it’s really difficult to imagine life without light bulbs, nonetheless, Edison’s patent was met with a lot of contempt, mostly because his colleague Morton believed that it will be an “unavoidable failure”. Additionally, in the United Kingdom, the government declared that it might be suitable for their friends overseas, however, that it’s unworthy of the attention of the public.
Thomas, on the other hand, never gave up on his idea and continued working on his patent, making different models and adding different features to it, and before everyone knew it, light bulbs have entered every single house out there, and today, it’s impossible for people to function properly without them.
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Life Would Be Boring With Television
At the beginning of 1926, a year after John Logie Baird demonstrated a set of a working television in Great Britain, a radio host Lee de Forest said that the machine will be an economic and marketing impossibility and that it would take a lot of time for improving the gadget.
After two decades have passed, the public was still extremely skeptical about having TV sets in their houses, mostly because they believed that the movie industry tried to gather more and more people around TVs. For example, a producer Zanuck said that people will definitely get bored by looking at a wooden box every night, and boy, was he wrong.
If scientists in the past had online platforms like crunchbase.com where they could find companies such as Invent Help, they would be able to tell them that their patent is worth working on, especially since in 2013, it was estimated that more than 1.5 billion houses, all over the globe own at least on TV.
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Traveling Would Be Daunting Without Airplanes
If you’re a history buff like me, you probably know that in 1901, Wilbur Wright declared that men won’t fly for more than 50 years, a proclamation made after he has experimented and tested a few of his gliders without success. Fortunately for all of us, the Wright Brothers continued working on their idea to make machines fly in the sky.
In 1903, they have been featured on hundreds of headlines when they succeeded in flying for the first time, a flight that only lasted for about 12 seconds. Although the success caused quite a commotion, during 1911, a French general in World War I was quoted for saying that planes are only fun toys for scientists, but, that they have no value to the military.
22 years later, when the first modern passenger plane took off, an engineer that worked on it stated that there will never be a bigger aircraft manufactured than the one he worked on. Nowadays, there are more than 100.000 flights that take off per day – when the situation is normal – hence, the Wright Brothers proved everyone wrong.
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Thank Henry Ford For Your Car
In 1899, a magazine titled “The Literary Digest” wrote an article on cars, stating that these machines are only carriages without horses and that they’re a simple luxury for wealthy individuals, and though its value will fall, it’ll never be as common and used as bicycles are. A few years later, The NYT also stated the same things, adding that motor vehicles are completely impractical.
A year later, an attorney Horace Rackham wanted to invest in buying stocks of Ford’s car company, however, he was advised by the chairman of a Michigan Bank that he might want to skip doing that, mostly because horses are here to linger, while autos will pass because they’re a novelty and quite expensive machines.
Fortunately for Rackham, he ignored this advice and went on to buy some stock of the Ford Motors Company. In 1908, Ford Motors manufactured the ‘Model T’ vehicle, and ten years later, this particular model would make up half of the entire number of vehicles in the United States of America.
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You’re Connected Because of Your Computer
If there is truly one thing that was believed would fail, it was the personal computer. Having a PC at your house was definitely worrying a lot of people back in the day, despite the fact that the functionalities of the machine improved since 1949. Why were they consider troublesome for many people? Well, they were viewed as a chore, mostly because it took a long time to master and learn how to use the devices, which prompted people to think that they don’t actually need to have it at their houses.
Even the founder of a computer company, Ken Olsen said that there is no sane reason why someone would like to have a personal PC in their house. But, according to a report back from 2017, more than 150 million people have a computer, meaning that this patent was quite a success.
Conclusion
There is a wide range of inventions that were subjected to scrutiny before people realized the benefits that they could gain from them. And, as you have seen in the article above, some of the most important items that we use today weren’t as popular with the public as they’re today.
Hence, now that you know more about a few inventions that didn’t get the attention they deserved, you shouldn’t lose any more of your time. Instead, open up your browser, and start searching for some other inventors and their patents that people thought would fail, but they’re still used today.