The Mass Shaving Machine
As walrus mustaches became less popular in the early nineteenth century, it became more socially acceptable for men to be clean-shaven. Because morning routines that included shaving took time, a tradition of stopping by the barbershop for a thorough shave and shoeshine became commonplace. But, as we all know, a barber can only service one customer at a time. So, one solution, rather short-lived, but a solution nonetheless, was found. The solution was a ‘group shaving machine,’ which could seat many men in a row and apply foam to all of their faces. Then, their facial hair would be trimmed with a big blade. In principle, the equipment could shave 12 men at once. However, the machine’s limitations meant that it couldn’t change its movements based on the contour of a certain face, resulting in uneven results and cuts from the blade. Ouch!
The Mousetrap Pistol
This invention by James A. Williams from Texas in 1882 took a pretty intense approach to mouse traps. He was inspired by 19th-century “burglar alarms,” which entailed jury-rigging a gun and lever device to kill anyone or anything who opened the door or window to which it was attached. This mouse trap design, which involves securing a “revolver or pistol” to an “appropriate frame,” had one advantage though: it would sound an alarm when it went off, allowing it to be reset. But people were wary of having .50-caliber revolvers in their kitchens, so the product never took off. Only 12 years later, William C. Hooker invented the traditional mousetrap apparatus that has become synonymous with the term “mousetrap.”
The Portable Hat Radio
Due to the large size of early radios, the thought of being able to listen to the radio on the go was unthinkable decades before wonders like the Walkman, iPod, and cell phone came to be. But wait, there was a radio hat that was invented around the 1930s. This strange gadget, thought to have been invented in Berlin around 1930, was essentially a straw hat with two big antennas poking out on top. Despite the fact that numerous variants of the radio were manufactured from a variety of different materials, none of them became popular. It was not only inconvenient but there were also problems with radio transmissions. These are just three, but several insane contraptions were built and did not survive to the present day, but most were the start of something significant. Consider the mouse trap, for instance!