thomas edison smoked several cigars a
day yeah he invented stuff too shut up
welcome to watch mojo and today we're
counting down our picks for the top 10
mocked inventions that became successful
my friends at long last the day has come
we have the means the understanding
the technology
to allow spiders to talk with cats
for this list we'll be looking at
life-changing inventions that were
initially predicted to fail which of
these entries are you most surprised to
see on this list let us know in the
comments below
number 10 automobiles the automotive
industry is today one of the world's
largest but just a little over a century
ago there was a lot of skepticism about
the prospects of the driving machine you
know the horse discourage was actually
the work of the devil so you can imagine
that this was not a good environment to
be the person inventing the horseless
carriage in 1899 the literary digest a
highly influential magazine at the time
referred to automobiles as ordinary
horseless carriages that will never be
used as commonly as bicycles due to
their expensive cost just four years
later horus rackham one of the first
lawyers of the ford motor company was
discouraged from buying stock in the
company by a bank president who called
automobiles only a novelty and a fad if
only they could drive a delorean back to
the future they'd sure eat their words
what did i tell you
88 miles
number nine umbrellas
compliments of kg bird maker of superior
umbrellas it's a clue all right but what
does it mean although they were
initially designed to protect people
from sunlight by the early 18th century
umbrellas had become more commonly used
for their waterproof function however in
most parts of the world it seems men had
no problem at all getting wet as
umbrellas were largely seen as an
accessory only used by women umbrella
buddy
now we got that damn urban sombrero to
contend with
in britain it would take the
perseverance of one jonas hanway to get
everyone else in on the umbrella crates
after returning from a trip abroad
hanway began using an umbrella which
infuriated many coach drivers who saw
big booms in business on rainy days and
were scared of losing customers
thankfully hanway stuck to his guns and
by doing so he successfully dismantled
the gendered associations of the
umbrella
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number eight airplanes
not everyone was impressed when the
wright brothers broke new ground and
successfully flew the first airplane in
1903. it is a short flight but with
wilbur wright at the controls the right
flyer shows complete mastery of the
skies
just a couple of years later ferdinand
foch a french general and the supreme
allied commander during the first world
war called the visionary inventions
interesting scientific toys and while he
may not have been totally wrong seeing
his planes now also make for pretty
interesting toys he completely missed
the mark when he determined that they
were of no military value aerial
photography became a vital operation for
both sides during the war today
airplanes are not only used commercially
to transport passengers and cargo their
ability to provide aerial surveillance
has proven to be of immense value to
various military forces around the world
number seven forks
all right what are we having the use of
the fork as a personal utensil was
popularized during the byzantine empire
and while it became common all over the
middle east by the 10th century its use
was still sneered at in most parts of
europe two byzantine princesses teopanu
and maria argiropolina are largely
credited with introducing the fork to
the western world when they moved to
europe after getting married teofanu was
met with shock after using the utensil
to eat and argiropolina was ridiculed by
the church for using it instead of the
natural forks attached to her hands god
in his wisdom has provided man with
natural forks his fingers therefore it
is an insult to him to substitute
artificial metallic forks for them when
eating even with the efforts of both
princesses it would take a few hundred
years before forks were adopted all
around europe shrimp fork
salad fork
dinner fork number six printing press
the fruit of gutenberg's work can be
seen all around us but it's more
important than that
for everything that our culture and our
civilization depends on
starts
with gutenberg's invention when the
first flatbed printing press was
developed in germany in the mid 15th
century it was seen as a threat to the
work of monks who regarded their hand
copying of the scripture as divine labor
in 1492 one such monk johannes tritimius
published an essay in which he described
printing as morally inferior to copying
and predicted that printed materials
would never last ratinus a benedictine
abbott and leading scholar argued that
since printed materials used paper they
were more easily degradable and
incomparable to the parchment that monks
wrote their words on to show the church
that his invention presented an
opportunity and not a threat he also
printed documents like this papal
indulgence ironically tritimius
published this essay on printed paper as
he believed the material would be
far-reaching that way we're so used to
living with printed matter every day of
our lives from the serial package in the
morning to the book at bedtime that it
might perhaps be rather hard to imagine
what the world was like before printing
number five televisions it is now 12
years since this apparatus showed the
transmission of outline images to the
public for the first time for how
ubiquitous televisions are today it's
hard to fathom that so many people were
against the idea at first after scottish
inventor john baird put on the very
first public demonstration of a
television in 1925 he drew the ire of
radio legend lee deforest who predicted
the device would be a commercial and
financial disaster this apparatus was
shown to members of the royal
institution and others on january 27
1926 and showed
true television images in light and
shade for the first time baird's
invention was also ridiculed by members
of the print media with one daily
express newspaper editor calling him a
lunatic for even thinking the idea of a
television was attainable even 20 years
down the line it was still met with
skepticism most notably from hollywood
giant daryl f zanuck who deemed the
device a mere plywood box that people
would quickly get tired of television
has grown from a scientific novelty
to a commercial service number four
space travel just like airplanes and
automobiles before it the invention of
spacecraft and humanity's ambition to
explore the universe was met with a lot
of derision by critics we choose to go
to the moon in this decade and do the
other things not because they are easy
but because they are hard making another
appearance on our list is radio pioneer
lee deforest for as innovative as he was
deforest clearly lacked a lot of
foresight as he proclaimed such a
man-made moon voyage will never occur
regardless of all future scientific
advances
in this case it didn't take too long to
prove to forest wrong as just four years
after his remarks russian cosmonaut yuri
gagarin was launched into space paving
the way for the prevalent exploration of
space that occurs today i hope you
enjoyed the trip
today with us on board the dragon
capsule endeavor with our friend tremor
the apatosaurus number three light bulbs
prior to the invention of the light bulb
people used candles gas lights and oil
lamps to illuminate their surroundings
at night but these were mostly unsafe
options with his developments of the
first commercially viable electric light
bulb thomas edison provided a safer
practical and more stable option but
some people still chose to remain in the
dark the first reaction by the
scientific community was the whole thing
was a hoax
despite that the public went crazy over
it professor henry morton the then
president of the stevens institute of
technology called the invention a
conspicuous failure and a british
parliamentary committee deemed it
unworthy of the attention of practical
or scientific men edison didn't quite
have all the kinks worked out yet but he
did have a great patent and his patent
despite the attempts of many others to
enter the market protected his business
very effectively while his detractors
would eventually see the light edison
himself proved to be a naysayer as he
frequently mocked nikola tesla's
invention of the alternating current
model everybody assumed that edison
would get the contract to wire it into
power the first world's fair powered by
electricity and to everyone's surprise
westinghouse using tesla's patents won
the contract number two telephones
actually being able to hear a real voice
on either end
that's something that many more people
would be excited about and it actually
tied humanity together once alexander
graham bell received the first patent
for the telephone in 1876 he shopped his
device around and made a 100 000 offer
to telecommunications giant western
union the company's president william
orton declined the purchase reportedly
asking what use could this company make
of an electrical toy obviously that toy
became one of the most widely used
devices and just three years later
western union tried to develop their own
telephone and were shut down with patent
lawsuits from bell the fact that human
voices seem to be emerging from this
contraption
it's
beyond magical just like its
predecessors the cell phone would also
receive its own share of skepticism as
it emerged in the 1980s with an
executive at motorola proclaiming that
it wouldn't replace wired telephones
glad to know they were all proven wrong
industry watchers say there are only a
few thousand cellular phones in use
right now
but that number is expected to grow
considerably within the next few years
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number one the internet every business
no matter how large no matter how small
will be on the internet in the year two
2000. it's hard to imagine what the
modern world would look like without the
internet but back in the mid 90s not
everyone was enthusiastic about the idea
you write to it like mail no a lot of
people use it and communicate i guess
they can communicate with nbc writers
and producers alison can you explain
what internet is in 1995 astronomer
clifford stoll published a newsweek
article in which he predicted that the
brilliant innovation would just never
work that same year robert metcalf
inventor of ethernet made the same
prediction and declared that he'd eat
his words if he was wrong a promise he
fulfilled at the international world
wide web conference in 1997 when he
consumed a blended mixture of his
article and water i gave about a dozen
reasons why the
internet was fragile many of those
reasons are still true today it wouldn't
be the first time the internet or one of
its components would be belittled as
email 2 was initially dismissed as a
viable medium of communication it's very
hip to be on the internet right now do
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