21 Failed Inventions - mental_floss List Show Ep. 324 | Mental Floss

Hey, I'm Mike, this is Mental Floss on YouTube, and did you know that in the 1970s, Henry Smolinski

and Hal Blake invented the AVE Mizar, a flying Ford Pinto? I mean, of course, if you're going to choose a car to make fly, why not the Pinto

It could fly up to 12,000 feet and reach 130 miles an hour

One minor problem was the car's right wing. It failed one trial run in 1973, then it failed later, again that year, in a crash that killed

both inventors. And that is the first of many failed inventions, either practically or commercially, that I'm

going to tell you about here today. Something tells me that an episode about failed inventions isn't going to be the most uplifting

episode of The Mental Flossless Show, but to get started, Mattel's game console Intellivision

was released in 1979 to compete with the Atari 2600. The invention itself wasn't bad, it has since been named number 14 on IGN's list of greatest

game consoles of all time, but it wasn't successful. Within four years of its release, Mattel had lost 394 million dollars and was on the

brink of bankruptcy. You know what really grinds my gears? When you're eating your hard-boiled egg at breakfast and you go in for the slice and

it just rolls away, the egg-cuber was exactly what it sounds like

You put an egg into a little plastic contraption and you squash it until it's a cube

Finally! The Bell Rocket Belt was a very promising invention for the US Army in the 1950s and 60s

It was a rocket pack that helped a person leap for a short distance

President John F. Kennedy was even given a personal demonstration. But the belt only put a person in the air for 21 seconds at a time enough to reach a mere 120 meters So along with potential altitude the army also lost interest

Another futuristic sounding 1950s invention, the flying saucer camera. It took two pictures at once, one regular picture, and one that separated light out into colors

so that you could see more clearly where the flying saucers were coming from

Believe it or not, it was developed for the US Air Force because of all people, of course

they know, the truth is out there. Thomas Edison invented an electric pen, which would make copies of documents people were

writing by creating stencils as they wrote. It had some initial success, but couldn't compete with inventions like the typewriter

Although the basic design was later reused for another invention, a much less efficient

way of creating documents, the first electric tattoo needle in 1891. In 1948, a man named Joe Gilpin invented a motorized surfboard, which he sold for $345

It went 7 miles an hour, was steerable, but really had nothing to do with surfing

Franz Reichelt created a wearable parachute in the early 1900s. The suit was supposed to turn into a parachute during a plummet

On test dummies it worked sometimes, but not all the time. Reichelt, though, he had faith and got permission to test it from the Eiffel Tower in 1912

He jumped, his invention wrapped around him, and he died. I'm starting to see, I think, a pattern developing here

If you're an inventor and you're inventing something that will help you fly, maybe don't test it on yourself. Flying tanks, it turns out, were almost a thing invented by the US

or the Soviet Union, or Japan, or the UK, but they didn't really make sense. They were

very heavy, because they're tanks, and the tow planes tended to overheat. You may remember

the year 2000 invention QCAT a barcode scanner shaped like a cat You could scan barcodes from magazines or products that would take you to a URL but no one wanted to do that so the QCAT was obsolete within a year

QR codes, though, that is the wave of the future. In 1930s London, you could buy a mesh baby cage to suspend your child outside your apartment window

The invention was supposed to be for the health of the babies, so they could get fresh air

The Glamour Bonnet was a helmet that covered your whole head with a see-through part for your eyes from the 1940s

In the helmet, you'd experience low atmospheric pressure, like a vacuum that was supposed to improve skin complexion

Glamour Bonnet is also the name of my hair metal revival band

Similarly, the shower hood from the 1970s in Germany covered a person's whole head

Then, they could shower while still keeping their makeup and hair intact

I guess someone eventually figured out that people like to wash their hair, too

In the mid-1990s, Thirsty Dog and Thirsty Cat were released. They were flavored water for your pets

Beef and fish flavored. Yum. Speaking of gross flavors, Hunnagar was a food created in 1959 by Dr. DeForest C. Jarvis

It was a combination of honey and apple cider vinegar. Surprisingly, people didn't love the taste

A phone answering robot invented in 1964 by Klaus Scholz was a bust

The main problem, the robot didn't really answer the phone, it just picked it up and answered the phone in silence

making it more of a phone-touching robot than a phone-answering robot, really

In the 1960s, a solution for reading on a crowded subway was invented

Rush hour reading glasses. You could read a newspaper that you were holding over your head thanks to glasses with right angles I not gonna to lie I sort of want one of these for reading my phone on the subway The Vespa 150 TAP a military Vespa complete with a rifle was designed for the French

army in the 1950s. One major problem, you couldn't shoot the rifle from the scooter, you had to remove it

because there was no aiming device. And also, you were on a scooter

Nintendo's 1995 Virtual Boy lost the company quite a bit of money and was discontinued within

one year. It was a portable 3D console that you had to cram your face into in order to

play. Major problems included eye strain, the fact that most Nintendo developers were

focused on the N64 at the time. I actually had one of these. You also needed about two

cubic feet to use it comfortably and it came in a weird briefcase. It definitely looked

more like surveying equipment than a video game. Back in the 30s, people apparently had a need for a cigarette umbrella. It was a device

that you stick your cigarette in to smoke out of and a little umbrella kept your cigarette

dry from the rain. Adorable. Finally, I return to the salon to tell you that the monowheel is still around, but when

they were invented in the 1800s, they were intended to be a useful mode of transportation

Essentially, it's a wheel that you sit in, moved forward by other wheels inside of it

In the 1930s, a motorized monowheel was built that could go 93 miles an hour, but still

it turns out people just prefer bicycles. Thanks for watching Mental Floss on YouTube, which is made with the help of these very nice people

My name is Mike Rugnetta. If you like my face, you can find more of it on YouTube at PBS Idea Channel

And if you like my voice, you can find it on my podcast, Reasonably Sound. Links to both of those things in the doobly-doo

And hey, DFTBA