Top 8 inventors whose inventions never saw the light of day, and that’s pretty good news

1. The guy who invented the euthanizing rollercoaster

Julijonas Urbonas is quite an amazing person. This researcher from Lithuania had the good idea to design the ultimate rollercoaster, made for a single passenger and whose sequence and amplitude of looping was supposed to lead to death by cardiac arrest. For Julijonas, this invention would make it possible to leave our world in a moment of euphoria and adrenaline much more pleasant than a slow and painful death. I recommend you le podcast de Marina Rollman who tells the story with shameless charisma.

2. The guy who invented the newspaper printed directly at your home

WGH Finch doesn’t just have a first name made up of three initials, he’s also an inventor who doesn’t care about cockchafers. In the 1930s (well before the Internet so, I specify in case you are bad at history) he developed a kind of machine that allowed you to print your newspaper at home.

WHAAAAAAAAT? Imagine a little, with radio waves we receive a photo of the newspaper on a device which will then print it in the form of a roll of paper. Good suddenly after you have to fold it yourself which is super boring. Yeah well clearly it was nice but not that crazy this story, we did well not to be impressed.

3. The guy who wanted to dry up the Mediterranean Sea so we could easily travel between Europe and Africa

In 1923, a German architect by the sweet name of Herman Sörgel had the (crazy) project of building a dam in Gibraltar to dry up the Mediterranean and make it possible to reach the two continents. Well, imagine that the idea comes back on the carpet.

This project is part of a completely different current perspective today when we are, among other things, threatened by the rising waters. However, we can also see there one of the many half-fascinating, half-frightening geo-engineering projects to save the planet (when in fact it is enough to just eat the sausage with the skin on to save the planet, it was not damn complicated).

4. The guy who invented a local flying saucer

Does the name René Couzinet mean anything to you? It’s a shame because this atypical Vendéen had developed a “multi-winged aerodyne”. A name that means nothing to you either, and for good reason this flying machine never saw the light of day but had all the flying saucers that we later found in the works of SF.

5. The guy who invented the plow

In order to fight against road accidents, the pedestrian chaser as seen in the video below had to pick up pedestrians encountered by accident on the road, as much to say something that seemed not completely developed if you will My opinion.

An invention that has come a long way since a priest also developed a car with a foam bumper to protect pedestrians. Well all this will not prevent cars from continuing to crush people on the roads but hey one day, maybe?

6. The guy who pretended he invented a time machine

Yes yes. Absolutely. The Chronovisor was born from the ambitious spirit of the Benedictine monk Don Pellegrino Ernetti. Well the guy said that with this machine you could talk to dead people including little Jesus, which leads us to believe that he was mostly talking nonsense. But you can imagine the mess if we could look in the past how we would waste a lot of time, it would be even worse than Tik-Tok.

7. Maurice Ward and his thermally insulating substance

This rather funny British inventor unfortunately passed away in 2011. The man had invented Starlite: a SUUUUUPER efficient thermally insulating substance. But the gentleman never wanted to let go of his little recipe that he would certainly have taken with him to the grave even if his family claims to be now the holder of the secret (without proof).

8. The Krummlauf to shoot in unexpected corners

The curved rifle is not really an invention that never saw the light of day (unfortunately) but which at least did not meet with great success, certainly due to the fact that it is necessarily a super stupid idea and that there is a high probability that the bullet will explode in your face.