Some of those were pretty stupid, especially the ones to designed to for cigarettes and of course the glowing tires, but quite a few are precursors for things that we now take for granted, like the mini-TV, the TV glasses, which portend virtual reality devices.

Personally, I'd like to have a quick-draw robot. That'd be lots of fun.

I think it's the author's whose dumb.

Glad some of those made you laugh.

I guess if we didn't have brilliant minds coming up with what would be perceived "dumb" inventions at the time we wouldn't have the brilliant inventions of today.

Maybe a better title would be "Funny Inventions that Lead to Brilliant Technologies".


"I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started" - Ray Kurzweil


"An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots" - Charles F. Kettering

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
The curved barrel is a problem because the bullet practically disintegrates going around the curve. But there is a more modern gun that can shoot around corners, it just doesn't use a curved barrel.

Actually the German tankers used the curved barrel machine gun succesfully during WW2.