3 Life-changing Technologies that Were Never Developed

All inventors of the world have their fair share of ideas that have been shot down and laid in the graveyard. Of all these ideas, how many of them do you think would have been good for us if they were developed?

While we can’t comment on if they would’ve been good or bad for society, here are three life-changing technologies that were never developed.

Henry Ford’s Flivver

Most people know who Henry Ford is. He is the founder of the Ford Motor company and manufactured the Ford Model T Car. This manufacturing process gave birth to the assembly line way of producing and putting things together. This revolutionized the industry.

Henry Ford had another idea for a vehicle. He called it the Flivver and described it as the Model T but a plane.

To Ford, the Flivver was to be the personal aircraft of the common man. It was approximately 15 feet long and had a wingspan of 23 feet. Its engine had 3 cylinders and 35 horsepower.

Ford was confident that this new “flying car” was the next big thing. In order to bring his idea into the forefront of society, he enlisted the help of test pilot Harry J. Brooks.

Sadly, Brooks met his end inside one Flivver. Along with his death was the death of the Flivver ever becoming a mainstream idea.

What would the world be like if we all had our own personal planes? Would society have developed faster with the radical speed of travel these planes gave? Would there be as much as traffic in the air as there is now on the ground? We’ll never know now.

A Sustainable Dance Floor

All it takes for a good idea to come into fruition is a good understanding of some scientific concepts. For bar owner Andrew Charalambous, it was the understanding of mechanical energy.

In the bar he owned, Charalambous thought it pretty great to capture and store the mechanical energy that dancers were expending out on the dance floor.

To do so, he installed some piezoelectric cells that did just that. With the energy stored, these cells also converted it into electricity and stored it into batteries.

Eventually, he found success as the energy he was taking in powered as much as 60% of the needs of his club.

The sad part of it was that it never grew farther than his own club. Wonder why no one else picked it up?

Tesla’s Alternating Current

If you’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige”, then you know who Tesla is. For those who aren’t familiar with the movie, let me illustrate a scene.

In one scene, Tesla’s assistant was making his rounds to do some experiments. In one such experiment, the assistant was able to power a light bulb just by touching it. The trick was that the electricity was coursing safely through his body.

Tesla you see was a scientist and rival of Thomas Edison. One of his primary works was the alternating current, a direct rival to Edison’s direct current.

The difference between the two was the cost. Edison was preoccupied with the cost of his inventions, while Tesla was merely concerned with how effective it could have been.

Alternating current would have cost less and could travel farther over thinner lines.

At GCC Melt, we advise all readers to look up these inventors and their lost works. Who knows? These ideas could spark the next big thing to make an impact on society.