The Gas-Shooting Riot Car sounds like something out of a ‘Mad Max’ film, and in reality, this wasn’t so far from the truth. If you think that we’re living in a terrible, politically incorrect world, the 1930s were far worse. Back then, if a group of protesters were making too much noise, the police could run over them with a huge vehicle that also shot water, bullets or poison gas streams.
Patented in 1938, the Gas-Shooting Riot Car was meant to disperse protesters and dissolve riots, but obviously, it was a clear and savage violation of basic human rights. Thankfully, this car stayed in the ‘idea’ phase, and was never built. Politicians probably had a second thought and decided the consequences and future lawsuits just weren’t worth it.
The Fiske Reading Machine
In 1922, celebrity inventor Bradley Fiske created the Fiske Reading Machine, a contraption that everyone thought would revolutionize literature. Marketed as the machine that "would render printing presses obsolete", the invention was born from the idea that books would be printed on very small pages, in very tiny letters, and people would hold customized magnifying glasses up to their eyes in order to read them. It already sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?
Surprisingly, many publications claimed that the Fiske Reading Machine was great for a number of reasons: cheap manufacturing, less paper needed, longer durability of books, no need for eye glasses anymore, poor people could afford it, easy and cheap to send by mail, more free space at home, etc. Now, while all of this may be true, the Fiske reading machine was very short-lived, since, realistically, people didn't actually enjoy holding a magnifying glass up to their eyes for countless hours.
The Welte-Mignon
The Welte-Mignon reproducing piano was introduced in 1904, and was quite an interesting twist on the already existing player pianos of the decade. Player pianos were pianos that played pre-recorded music with the use of automated cylinders, but what made the Welte-Mignon special was that it focused on the performance, as well as the music. A famous pianist could play songs on the Welte-Mignon and the instrument would record their performance on special rolls.
These rolls could then be taken home by anybody that owned another Welte-Mignon, and listeners could relive the exact same performance over and over. Many thought it was a musical revolution, and while it was indeed a marvelous instrument used by several composers of the time, this reproducing piano was even replaced by the more modern record player. By 1930, Welte rolls were no longer recorded.
The Slendo Massager
Weight has been an obsession for people for a very long time, especially since society decided that a thin and slender body equals beauty. So, when the novel Slendo Massager appeared in 1940, people went crazy, especially women. The machine consisted of a series of metal rollers that massaged women's hips and thighs, which supposedly blasted their fat through electricity.
Basically a glorified massage chair, women used to stand or sit while "losing weight", and obviously, the Slendo Massager became wildly popular across the country. Similar to countless machines that have been produced since (the Ab Energizer, etc.), the idea was that the electrical currents helped melt away the excess weight by causing muscles to contract. However, by the end of a number of sessions, the only thing Slendo Massager users were left with, was marks from the metal.
The Flying Saucer Camera
The 1950s were an interesting decade for many different reasons, but one of the most fascinating is perhaps the extremely high amount of UFO sightings in the United States. The government was so fed up with people constantly reporting to have seen a UFO, that they decided to come up with a solution. They would introduce the Flying Saucer Camera.
The Air Force came up with this special camera that, apart from sounding like something from a sci-fi series from the 90s, had two special lenses designed to identify the source of a strange light. It worked trough a simple process: one lens took a regular photo while the other separated the light into colors, so that its origin would be clear. Needless to say, this X-files camera didn't last very long on the market.