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Vice Blog

MONTREAL - BAD INVENTIONS FROM YESTERYEAR

We asked our intern Mike (the philosopher behind the eternal question Are Farts Air-Poop?) to put together a list of  gadgets that he'd most like to see in that ever elusive thing, the future. Things like the Hawaiian Chair or that laser that turns any bad song into Bennie and the Jets (does not exist) or the CNN-remote-control-karaoke-stick (you speak into the microphone built into your TVs remote control and you can make anyone on CNN say anything you want). Instead, he came back to us with a list of stupid inventions from the past, saying "What if I shit on something like the video mounted belt player and then all of a sudden it got trendy to communicate with people by means of a video screen inches above another person's genitalia? I would feel foolish! I feel more at home making fun of inventions made fifty, sixty years ago, where hindsight gives me the smug superiority that I relish but so rarely possess." So, the following is a list of inventions from Popular Mechanics that never took off.

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Solar Bath (1933)
So, you'd stick your head in what looks like a mini tanning bed and it would cure many illnesses of the head? Well, it certainly wouldn't cure skin cancer and eye disease, two ailments caused by prolonged exposure to ultra-violet light. Oh oh oh, those people in the past were pretty fucking stupid, huh?

Fire escape parachutes (1932)
So many questions. How many floors up would you have to be to use this properly? Do you wear it all the time in anticipation of a fire or do you identify that there's a fire in your building, run to the glass-encased parachute box, smash it, and quickly put it on?  I don't know about you, but I have never been able to successfully get my G.I. Joe's to fall gracefully with their parachutes, even if I opened it up with my hands before dropping. And what about the wind?

Electric uniforms (1932)
It would be fun to sit around all day dreaming up this shit. So the idea is that you'd wear an outfit lined with strips that absorb and hold electricity.  With a positive connection on one foot and a negative on the other, you're a walking AA battery. Through the miracle of conduction, the electricity would shoot up your body and warm you. But you'd have to stand on the little metal contact plates, which surely GM was planning to install everywhere in the city. IN THE SAME CITIES THAT HAVE POLICEMAN STANDING IN ONE SPOT ALL DAY WAVING AT PEOPLE.

Transparent Face Masks (1940)
    "Russell, you know what frustrates me?"
    "What's that, Leonard?"
    "Getting shit on my face. I hate that. I'm so sick of it, I don't know what to do. Especially when I'm taking a shower."
    "By Jove! That gives me an idea! What if we could invent a high-tech-face-and-head-protecting unit? "
    "Russell you ol' fart, we'd make billions!" M'CHADWICKNRASH