Welcome to Top10Archive!
Have you ever wondered how more advanced the human species could've been if the Dark Ages
never occurred?
We're taking a look through the past, from ancient antiquity to modern days, to find
inventions that were lost that could've changed the world.
Water Fuel Cell Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell is mired in
controversy, with one side claiming complete fraudulence, and the other side claiming pure
genius and innovation.
Supposedly the water fuel cell is a technical design of a perpetual motion machine, where
Meyer claimed that an automobile retrofitting with the device could use water as fuel instead
of gasoline.
The fuel cell would split water into its component elements, hydrogen and oxygen, where the hydrogen
was then burned to generate energy.
In 1996, two investors sued Meyer, where he was forced to pay back their $25,000 investment
due to the court ruling that Meyer had committed gross and egregious fraud.
Stanley Meyer died suddenly on March 20th, 1998, while dining at a restaurant from a
cerebral aneurysm which has only spurred conspiracists that he was somehow assassinated.
Cloud Buster A cloudbuster is a pseudoscientific device
designed by Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, which he claimed could produce rain
by manipulating what he called orgone energy, or hypothetical universal life force, present
in the atmosphere.
The device was intended to be used similarly to a lightning rod, where it focused on a
location in the sky and was grounded, which in turn would draw the orgone energy out of
the atmosphere, where it created cloud formations and rain.
The cloudbuster consisted of an array of parallel hollow metal tubes, which were connected at
the rear to a series of flexible metal hoses, smaller than the main tubes.
The open end of these hoses were placed in water, and the pipes aimed where they wanted
to draw energy.
The remains of a cloudbuster of Reich's can be found in Rangeley, Maine.
Olestra While technically not a lost invention, but
rather a shelved one, due to the negative backlash it received from its over cautionary
side effects, Olestra was a miracle fat substitute that added no fat, calories, or cholesterol
to products, meaning that it could be used in otherwise high-fat foods such as potato
chips, where it would lower or eliminate their fat content.
Olestra was approved by the FDA in 1996, concluding that it met the safety standards for food
additives, with reasonable certainty of no harm.
The side effects mentioned were abdominal cramping and loose stools, and that Olestra
inhibited the absorption of some vitamins and nutrients.
These symptoms, however, normally occurred only by excessively consuming Olestra products
in a short period of time.
Chronovisor Marcello Pellegrino Ernetti was an Italian
Roman Catholic Benedictine priest and the most famous exorcist who worked in the Venice
area for his time, but he is also credited to have constructed the Chronovisor, a time
viewer that allegedly allows those who use it to see and hear events from the past.
It was proposed that the device was constructed by a team of twelve world famous scientists,
including Enrico Fermi, and Wernher von Braun.
According to an explanation by Ernetti, luminous energy and sound that objects emanate are
recorded in their environment, allowing his device to reconstruct from the energy images
and sounds of a specific set of events from the past.
Ernetti claims that he witnessed the lost tragedy Thyestes, by Quintus Ennius, and Jesus
dying on the cross.
The Chronovisor is now supposedly dismantled.
Silphium A plant used in classical antiquity as seasoning,
medicine and a potent contraceptive, Silpium was created by nature, but lost due to human
overharvesting.
It became an essential item of trade in the ancient North African city of Cyrene, and
so critical to the Cyrenian economy, that most of their coins were adorned with the
picture of the plant.
The plant was also used by the Egyptians, Knossos Minoans, and most Mediterranean cultures,
including Romans.
Most believe that the identity of the plant, widely thought to belong to the genus Ferula,
is just misidentifed nowadays, but there are references that the last plant was gifted
to Emperor Nero, which he promptly consumed.
While the civilizations of the time should've been in a population boom, there is evidence
that shows it was declining.
Flexible Glass Isidore of Seville was the craftsman who invented
the technique to create flexible glass where he presented it to Roman Emperor Tiberius
Caesar in the shape of a bowl.
Displeased with such a gift, Tiberius threw it to the floor, where the glass dented instead
of shattering.
The inventor then repaired the bowl easily with a hammer, and swore to the Emperor, when
questioned, that he alone knew the technique of manufacture.
Tiberius had the man beheaded, fearing such a material would undermine the value of gold
and silver, even going as far as burning down the inventors entire workshop.
This is only one accounting of the story, with another claiming that the inventor was
unknown, the object was a goblet, and the man sought a pardon, but regardless of which
version told, unbreakable glass at that time would've possibly changed the course of history.
Tom Ogle Carburetor In the 1970s, a twenty four year old dropout
of El Paso, Texas, named Tom Ogle developed a new type of carburetor that pressurized
gasoline into a vapor and injected it into the firing chambers.
When interviewed by a reporter, the young inventor revealed that he discovered his fuel
efficient system by accident, when messing around with his lawn mower and accidentally
puncturing its fuel tank.
Demonstrating how his new invention worked, he installed the carburetor into his Ford
Galaxie, where experts extensively tested and engineers found no fraud, and drove 200
miles on a measured 2 gallons with a reporter present.
After some licensing setbacks, Tom Ogle died in 1981 after a heavy night of drinking which
has since spurred conspiracy theories and conjecture.
Starlite Amateur chemist Maurice Ward invented Starlite
during the 1970s and 1980s, receiving a lot of publicity in 1993 when coverage of the
science and technology show Tomorrow's World demonstrated some of its properties.
Starlite, a name coined by Maurice's granddaughter, Kimberly, was able to be applied to objects
where it could be put under intense heat, even withstand a nuclear blast, and come out
unscathed.
It also did not produce any toxic byproduct or fumes.
Starlite's composition is a closely guarded secret that may have died with Maurice Ward
in 2011, that contained a variety of organic polymers and copolymers, and both organic
and inorganic additives, 21 in all.
While several organizations were interested in Maurice Ward's invention, such as NASA,
no agreements were solidified.
Sloot Digital Coding System Dutch electronics technician, Romke Jan Bernard
Sloot, announced that he had developed the Sloot Digital Coding System, a revolutionary
advance in data transmission, in the late 1990s.
He claimed that it could reduce a feature length film down to a file size of approximately
8kB.
The decoding algorithm was 370MB, which he demonstrated to Philips executives by simultaneously
playing 16 movies from a 64kB chip.
Sloot died of a heart attack one day before a beneficial deal was signed by Roel Pieper,
former CTO and board member of Philips, a Dutch technology company headquartered in
Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Philips company would have continued the work if the compiler stored on a floppy disk had
not disappeared.
Wireless Power Transmission Inventor Nikola Tesla was the first to delve
into and perform experiments with wireless power transmission at the turn of the 20th
century.
Between 1891 and 1904, Nikola experimented with the transmission of electrical energy
using spark excited radio frequency resonant transformers, now known as Tesla Coils, which
generated high AC voltages.
With this he was able to transfer power from short distances without wires.
The ultimate goal was to transmit electrical energy on a worldwide scale, directly into
homes and factories.
In 1901, Tesla began construction of a large high voltage wireless power station, now called
the Wardenclyffe Tower at Shoreham, that was intended to transmit power worldwide and broadcast
information, but sadly, in 1904 his investors pulled
the plug.