From Hype to Flop: 8 Last-Century Inventions That Bombed
5) Spokes for cars
Tires with air? Ew, yuck, gross! What is it, 1899? That’s what the engineers were thinking in 1905. They tried to create complex spoke wheels to make the car go smoother. In 1914 Popular Mechanics proposed that this new wheel would send pneumatic tires into the past, but somehow it didn’t. Nevertheless, this idea is still alive, although mostly in military projects and some bicycles.
6) The Helio-Motor
The early 1900s was a time of big brains. Dr. William Calver was one of them. Helio-Motor was his greatest invention that was destined to reach every household in the US and maybe even the world. Hmm, I don’t see any Helio-Motors in my house, do you? Yeah, it was one of those “Sun is hot and hot means free energy” kinda deals. The idea of using mirrors to focus the sunbeams was fine, but for this technology to be efficient, you’d need superconductive materials we don’t have even in 2020.
