Buzz
In a world filled with fleeting innovations, today’s cutting-edge gadgets and trends quickly fade into obscurity—sometimes by chance, often by design. Over the past two hundred years, industrial society has radically altered the world. However, many groundbreaking technologies from the past have been short-lived, influenced by shifting social dynamics, evolving production methods, and changing cultural values.
10. The Bathing Machine
During the Industrial Revolution in England, the idea of organized leisure began to take hold. The belief in the health benefits of sea air led to the rise of the modern summer holiday, but sea bathing became controversial due to the growing Victorian prudishness. To prevent interaction between bathers of different sexes, beaches became gender-segregated, and bathing machines became a common feature at fashionable English resorts. These enclosed cabins allowed individuals to change into the modest bathing attire of the time and could be wheeled into the water, shielding the public from exposing naked flesh.
As late as 1911, signs at one English seaside resort read: “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.” However, as the 20th century progressed, mixed bathing, once considered scandalous, gradually gained acceptance. The bathing machine became outdated, but without this quaint invention, the cherished English seaside holiday may never have endured.
9. The Electric Telegraph
Few inventions transformed the world as quickly as the electric telegraph. On May 24, 1844, inventor Samuel F. B. Morse tapped out a coded message in front of a captivated group of Washington lawmakers. Forty miles away, his assistant in Baltimore received the message: 'It shall be said of Jacob and Israel, What hath God wrought!'
Morse had created the world’s first instant communication technology. A devout man, he later claimed that the inaugural message 'baptized the American Telegraph with the name of its author': in other words, God. The telegraph flourished alongside America’s railroads and accelerated the industrial revolution, leading to the downfall of the Pony Express, among other unforeseen consequences. However, in 1876, another invention overshadowed Morse’s groundbreaking technology—the telephone era had arrived.
8. The Cylinder Phonograph
With the rise of the telegraph came another groundbreaking innovation: the cylinder phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. Drawing inspiration from both the repetitive nature of the telegraph and the groundbreaking sound transmission of the telephone, Edison created his new recording device. While Samuel Morse baptized his electric telegraph with 'What hath God wrought!' Edison’s first recorded message on his new invention was much less dramatic: the inventor joyously listened to his own voice reciting the nursery rhyme 'Mary had a little lamb.'
Edison’s phonograph, the first commercial medium of its kind, recorded on paraffin paper cylinders that were embossed using a needle and diaphragm. Pre-recorded phonograph cylinders quickly became available, serving as the crackly forerunner of today’s CDs and MP4s. The original paraffin cylinders were replaced by more durable metal versions covered in tin foil, but these too deteriorated quickly, leading to the final substitution of a hard wax coating.
In 1878, the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company began showcasing the new technology, and Edison profited handsomely, earning $10,000 for manufacturing and sales rights, along with 20% of the subsequent profits. Full of bold ideas, Edison shared some of his visionary thoughts on the phonograph in a June 1878 article for the North American Review. In addition to recording and playback, he proposed phonographs could be used for dictating letters, creating speaking books for the blind, making audio family scrapbooks, recording final messages from the dying, and even as an early form of voicemail. While many of these ideas were ahead of their time, Edison soon shifted focus to other inventions, such as the incandescent electric lamp. However, the Edison Company continued producing cylinder recordings until 1929, despite being overshadowed by the phonograph discs introduced by Columbia and Victor recording companies in the early 20th century.
7. Hydrogen Airships
Forget airplanes. For much of the 20th century, gas-filled dirigible airships were considered the future of flight, utilizing the lightest and most abundant element on Earth—hydrogen.
There was just one flaw: hydrogen is flammable. The era of transatlantic airships ended tragically in 1937, when the 800-foot Zeppelin Hindenburg crashed in New Jersey, claiming the lives of 36 people on board. While helium gas is a safer alternative, its rarity and high cost made it impossible to sustain airship travel.
Interestingly, hydrogen airships might be making a comeback, at least for freight transport. A 2019 scientific paper proposed new airships, potentially ten times the size of the Hindenburg, capable of carrying vast cargoes in the upper atmosphere. These colossal ships would operate as unmanned drones, constructed with modern fire-resistant materials like carbon fiber. The potential environmental benefits in terms of greenhouse gas reduction would be immense, but it remains to be seen whether this ambitious vision will take flight.
6. Daguerreotype Photography
Sometimes, newer isn't always better when it comes to technology. A prime example is the Daguerreotype, invented by Frenchman Louis Daguerre in 1839. Like Samuel Morse, Daguerre initially worked as a painter, but his interest in the science and technology of optics led him from the studio to the laboratory. There, he created the world’s first successful photographic method, which, in many ways, remains unparalleled by modern digital photography. Each Daguerreotype was crafted using a silver-plated copper sheet exposed to iodine vapors, harmful mercury fumes, and stabilized with salt water or sodium thiosulfate. Every image was one-of-a-kind, and its resolution—unlike pixelated digital images—was astounding, as magnification doesn’t distort it.
Sadly, Daguerre’s studio burned down in 1839, destroying most of his records and many early photographs. Today, only around two dozen confirmed images by Daguerre survive, including landscapes, portraits, and still life. By the mid-19th century, the Daguerreotype began to lose favor to the negative-based wet-collodion process (introduced in 1851, the same year Daguerre passed away). This new technique created a more affordable, reproducible product, though of lesser quality and convenience.
5. The Maxim Gun
"Whatever happens, we have got/ The Maxim gun and they have not," was the grim boast of the British Empire, proudly describing its ultimate tool of domination. Invented by American Hiram Maxim in 1884, the world’s first recoil-operated machine gun forever altered the nature of warfare. Future Prime Minister Winston Churchill witnessed its lethal power firsthand during the 1894 Battle of Omdurman. A small British force annihilated 40,000 Sudanese warriors, who "sank down in tangled heaps" under the relentless fire of the Maxim Gun. After five hours, 10,000 Sudanese lay dead, with only 20 British casualties. Although the Maxim Gun was prone to jamming and eventually replaced by more advanced technology, it continued to serve in Western military forces through World War I, the first large-scale conflict to witness mass slaughter through automatic fire.
4. The Malling-Hansen Writing Ball
Although now a relic, the manual typewriter once held great appeal, much like the quill pen it replaced. The first commercially successful model was the Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, invented in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1865. This odd device, resembling a mechanical hedgehog, was the MacBook Pro of its time. One of its most notable users was German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose poor eyesight led him to purchase this more efficient writing tool in 1881. So enamored with his new device, Nietzsche even wrote a poem dedicated to it:
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. The Atomic Bomb
"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds": these chilling words were spoken by nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer as he watched the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945.
Historians continue to debate whether the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War II were justified or simply acts of unnecessary destruction. Yet, one indisputable truth stands: the atomic bombs, which claimed the lives of approximately 200,000 Japanese civilians, are nothing compared to the later weapons of mass destruction capable of obliterating millions in an instant. The scientists behind the US Manhattan Project, who developed the A-bomb, were some of the earliest to caution against the far deadlier hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb. In a September 1945 letter, physicist Arthur Compton even expressed his belief 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."
Only time will reveal how long the era of nuclear weaponry will last and how it will ultimately end.
2. The Calculator Watch
In the 1980s, nothing epitomized 'hip to be square' like owning a calculator watch. While these gadgets had been around since the 1970s, part of a larger trend that included wrist-worn TVs and video games, Casio’s Databank series, launched in 1983, took the craze to new heights. The watch achieved iconic status two years later when Marty McFly famously wore his Casio Databank CA53W Twincept in the 1985 film *Back to the Future*.
Casio's Databank collection continues to be produced today, much to the delight of Generation X. What started as a practical tool became a retro fashion statement, far outlasting another tech icon from *Back to the Future*, the now-defunct DMC DeLorean sports car. In many ways, the Casio Databank foreshadowed the obsession with modern wearable technology, paving the way for devices like Fitbits, Google Smartwatches, and other wearable gadgets.
1. VHS Recording
For those of a certain age, few technologies evoke as much nostalgia as the VHS cassette tape, which was developed in 1970s Japan. Much like Edison’s phonograph, VHS served multiple purposes: sold in pre-recorded form or as blank tapes, perfect for recording everything from *The Dukes of Hazzard* to your sister’s graduation ceremony.
Like many items on this list, VHS still has its die-hard fans, and its decline occurred more gradually than we often recall. While the sleek DVD entered American homes in 1997, both formats coexisted for several years before VHS production finally ceased. In an August 2005 *Washington Post* article, it was noted that VHS had 'died at the age of 29,' yet 94.7 million US households still owned VCRs. That same year, *Revenge of the Sith* became the first *Star Wars* film released exclusively in DVD format. Ironically, 2005 also saw the release of *The Ring Two*, a cult horror film that resurrected the same concept from 2003's *The Ring*—a cursed VHS tape.
Let’s be honest: a haunted DVD would have never been as terrifying.
