30 Technologies That Were Once Amazing But Just Look Strange Today

Still, they were all cutting edge and visionary products when they first appeared.

Damjan

• Published in Interesting
• November 29, 2020

We live in times when technology progresses so fast, we can’t even keep track of the latest developments. This is enabled by the pioneers who started laying the foundations 50, 100, or 200 hundred years ago.

These inventions and technologies may look odd today. Still, they were all cutting edge and visionary products when they first appeared.

Motorized roller skates, giant mono-cycles, and orgone accumulators didn’t really catch on. Still, some of these inventions were further developed, and we are using them today -cellphones, deep-sea diving suits, robotic vacuum cleaners…

This list shows 30 of these, once groundbreaking inventions. Take a look. You’ll be amazed.

1. "Motorized Roller-Skate Salesman In California, 1961"

2. "350 Year Old Pocket Watch Carved From A Single Colombian Emerald"

3. "FBI's Fingerprint Files, 1944."

4. "Motorola Vice President John F. Mitchell Showing Off The Dynatac Portable Radio Telephone In New York City In 1973"

30 years ago, smartphones did not exist (the first phone that could be described as "smart" was the Simon Personal Communicator, introduced in 1994,) and 50 years ago, nobody had a PC in their home (the first personal-use computer Altair, introduced in 1974). Just imagine that, and you will begin to understand the pace the technology is accelerating at.

Ray Kurzweil said in his book "The Singularity Is Near" that" technology's quickening pace is not just a feeling, but actually real. It turns out, "the pace of technological progress—especially information technology—speeds up exponentially over time because there is a common force driving it forward."

In other words, every step in technology improvement is a giant leap.

5. "The 'Isolator' , By Hugo Gernsback: A Helmet For Insulating The Senses Against Distraction; From The Journal Science And Invention, Vol. 13, No. 3, July 1925"

The first automobile with an internal combustion engine was invented in 1886, and the self-driving car era started in 2012. If you look at automobile development, you will notice that every step of progress speeds up. They are no longer steps but leaps.

According to the Singularity Hub, the more efficient technology is, the more attention it gets. This implies an additional flow of resources. “Increased R&D budgets, recruiting top talent, etc., are directed to further improving the technology.”

We can expect that technological developments will be quite different 10 or 20 years from now. Maybe we will be seeing flying cars like in the Sci-Fi movies from the 60s. Perhaps we will have an AI friend or a pet.

6. "1911: Chester Mcduffee And His Ads Diving Suit, Aluminum Alloy Weighing 485 Lbs/200 Kg"

7. "Using A Two-Horn Listening Device At Bolling Field In Washington, D.c., In 1921 Before The Invention Of Radar, To Listen For Distant Aircraft"

8. "300 Year Old Library Tool That Enabled A Researcher To Have Seven Books Open At Once, Yet Conveniently Nearby (Palafoxiana Library, Puebla)"

9. "In 1955, This Tiny Electric Narrow Gauge Train Was Installed In New York’s Holland Tunnel To Monitor Traffic Speed"

10. "A 5mb Hard Disk Drive Being Loaded Onto A Plane, In 1956"

11. "Philco Predicta Television From The Late 1950s"

12. "The World's Oldest Surviving Diving Suit: The Old Gentleman, From 1860"

13. "This Car Is A French 'Delahaye 175s Roadster', Introduced At The Paris Motor Show In 1949. Only One Was Ever Made. It Was Recently Sold At Auction For Around Five Million Dollars."

14. "Bikes For Your Feet"

15. "A Thin TV Screen (Only 4 Inches Thick) With An Automatic Timing Device To Record TV Programs For Later Viewing Is The Wave Of The Future As Shown At The Home Furnishings Market In Chicago, Illinois, On June 21, 1961"

16. "The First Public Demonstration Of A Computer Mouse, Graphical User Interface, Windowed Computing, Hypertext And Word Processing, 1968"

17. "Robo-Vac, A Self-Proppeled Vacuum Cleaner Part Of Whirlpool’s Miracle Kitchen Of The Future, A Display At The 1959 American National Exhibition In Moscow, 1959"

18. "The Hindenburg Takes Shape, 1932"

19. "The Old "Telefontornet" Telephone Tower In Stockholm, Sweden, With Approximately 5,500 Telephone Lines C. 1890"

20. "A British Couple Sleeps Inside A "Morrison Shelter” Used As Protection From Collapsing Homes During The WWII 'Blitz' Bombing Raids... March 1941"

21. "Jay Ohrberg's 'Double Wide' Limousine. Built By The Man Who Also Created The 'American Dream' Superlimo"

22. "Orgone Accumulator, A Device Sold In The 1950s To Allow A Person Sitting Inside To Attract Orgone, A Massless 'Healing Energy'. The Fda Noted That One Purchaser, A College Professor, Knew It Was "Phony" But Found It "Helpful Because His Wife Sat Quietly In It For Four Hours Every Day."

23. "A Man With A Punt Gun, A Type Of Large Shotgun Used For Duck Hunting. It Could Kill Over 50 Birds At Once And Was Banned In The Late 1860s"

24. "TV Glasses Decades Before Google Glass, 1960s"

25. "Helen, An American Indian Telephone And Switchboard Operator, Montana, 1925"

26. "Soviet Peasants Listen To The Radio For The First Time, 1928"

27. "The Open Side View Of An Old Calculator"

28. "A Rail Zeppelin And A Steam Train Near The Railway Platform. Berlin, Germany, 1931"

29. "One-Wheel Motorcycle, Germany, 1925"

30. "Kodak K-24 Camera, Used For Aerial Photography During Ww2 By The Americans"

Damjan