Scientists are usually idealists and understandably focus on the best things that their discoveries
could potentially offer, which means they occasionally overlook mankind's capacity for
finding undesired, even nefarious, uses for their creations.
At Kitty Hawk in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made four short flights in the world's
first powered aircraft.
Since then, airplanes have made the world a much smaller place, making it possible for
anyone with enough cash and the willingness to sit in a tiny chair for hours to travel
halfway around the world in less than a day.
But airplanes have a downside, too, a huge downside, and the Wright Brothers came to
regret aspects of their epic invention.
According to the Baltimore Sun, the Wright Brothers thought the airplane might allow
all nations to gain a tactical advantage in war, which would make everyone essentially
equal and war therefore impossible.
Orville Wright said in 1915:
"The aeroplane will prevent war by making it too expensive, too slow, too difficult,
too long drawn out."
Then, he went and lived through two world wars.
By 1948, Orville Wright had completely changed his outlook, saying:
"We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth.
But we were wrong.
We underestimated man's capacity to hate and to corrupt good means for an evil end."
Imagine being called "the father of the Segway" or "the father of Smell-o-Scope."
That would suck, right?
"Eureka!"
"Did you build the smell-o-scope?"
"No, I remembered that I built one last year."
Now imagine being called "the father of lethal injection."
At least those first two titles won't cause party conversation to awkwardly cease while
everyone within earshot makes excuses and about getting another drink.
But for Dr. Jay Chapman, that's the name he's stuck with.
He told The Guardian in 2010:
"The media sometimes refers to me as the father of the lethal injection...It was not one of
my purposes in life.
It was something I was asked to do and I did it on the spur of the moment."
Chapman says he developed the lethal cocktail because he thought it would make the death
penalty process more efficient.
He hoped that making execution more humane would lead to swifter executions.
But today, he regrets his part in developing the lethal injection system, not because he's
come to realize that capital punishment is barbaric or anything like that, though.
Nope.
Chapman regrets developing lethal injection because it didn't really change anything.
People still linger on death row for decades.
And he says that he actually has the opposite problem with the method, he thinks it's too
humane.
He put it bluntly:
"I'm an eye for an eye person.
The lethal injection is too easy for some of them."
Some inventors regret their inventions because they caused death and destruction or have
the potential to destroy the world.
On the other hand, some inventors regret their inventions because they turned out to be super-annoying.
Yes, we're talking about the digital camera.
According to the BBC, Michael Tompsett, who captured the world's first color digital photograph
in 1972, doesn't regret the entire concept of the digital camera.
Digital cameras have done great things for photographers, not the least of which is making
photography a lot less expensive and therefore more accessible to the average person.
But is it really such an awesome thing that everyone and their duck-lipped teenager has
access to a camera with a screen-reversal feature?
"Let's all, let's all just take a selfie.
Take selfie.
Let's take a selfie!
Take a selfie!"
"Okay, everyone, get in."
"Let's take it."
"Okay, chin down."
That's exactly the kind of thing Tompsett hates seeing.
He told the BBC.
"I feel frustrated by all these people who have cameras, taking pictures of everything
in sight, and selfies.
You are walking along and a selfie stick suddenly appears.
I sometimes think whoever invented this technology should be dealt with."
In the late 1920s, American engineer Philo Farnsworth became the first person to successfully
transmit a television image.
According to Biography, Farnsworth patented his ideas and in 1938 founded the Farnsworth
Television and Radio Corporation.
Farnsworth had big dreams for television, he thought it had nearly unlimited potential
as an educational tool, and could solve illiteracy and ignorance.
"I'm fed up with all this reading!
You're a Wormwood, you start acting like one.
Sit up and look at the TV!"
He even believed it could stop war.
Well, that's what he thought at first.
Farnsworth's son Kent later said that his father hated what his invention had become,
to the point where he refused to let his kids watch television.
The younger Farnsworth quoted him as saying,
"There's nothing on it worthwhile, and we're not going to watch it in this household, and
I don't want it in your intellectual diet."
It is worth noting that Farnsworth later had a slight change of heart when he watched the
broadcast of the Moon landing.
Medicine has a long and not always squeaky-clean history, and MDMA in particular has been down
a long, weird road, if you don't know what that is, you probably have heard it referenced
by its more popular name: Ecstasy, the recreational drug that was popularized in the 1990s.
Alexander Shulgin didn't invent ecstasy, but he thought it had psychiatric uses.
According to the South China Morning Post, he was first introduced to the drug in 1976
and started developing a way to synthesize it while also developing methods for using
it for psychotherapy.
Obviously, his plans for MDMA didn't exactly pan out, the drug was banned in 1985 and placed
on the list of Schedule I drugs, with quote, "no currently accepted medical use and a high
potential for abuse."
Shulgin later regretted that his rediscovery of MDMA had played a part in its rising popularity
as a recreational drug.
Today the name "Nobel" is synonymous with peace.
It is, after all, attached to the prestigious Peace Prize.
So Nobel himself must have been a real peace-loving guy, right?
Well, maybe...but Alfred Nobel was also a lot like Michael Bay: He liked making things
go boom.
"Awesome barbecue, awesome pool."
According to Nobel's own website, Alfred Nobel not only invented dynamite, but was also involved
in the design and development of cannons and rockets.
Later in life, he started imagining that he might be able to end war by developing a weapon
so terrible no one would dare use it, once saying:
"On the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilised
nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops."
Nobel clearly didn't brush up on his Wright brothers history, and he appears to have regretted
his involvement in weapons-making later in life.
At least that's what Albert Einstein noted in a 1945 speech when he said:
"Alfred Nobel invented an explosive more powerful than any then known, an exceedingly effective
means of destruction.
To atone for this 'accomplishment' and to relieve his conscience, he instituted his
award for the promotion of peace."
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