Thanks to Joseph Karwowski, you’ll never have to say goodbye to your Uncle Julius. Patented in 1903, Karwowski’s “method of preserving the dead” hermetically encases the corpse in a block of transparent glass to prevent decay and maintain a lifelike appearance.
Bonus: “In Fig. 3 I have shown the head only of the corpse as incased within the transparent block of glass, it being at once evident that the head alone may be preserved in this manner, if preferred.”
When he wasn’t inventing logarithms, John Napier took a keen interest in military affairs. In 1596 he composed a list of war machines that “by the grace of God and worke of expert craftsmen” he hoped to produce “for defence of this Iland.” These included a piece of artillery that could “clear a field of four miles circumference of all living creatures exceeding a foot of height,” a chariot like “a moving mouth of mettle” that would “scatter destruction on all sides,” and “devises of sayling under water, with divers and other strategems for harming of the enemyes.”
No one knows whether Napier built his machines, but by World War I they were certainly realities — he had foreseen the machine gun, the tank, and the submarine.
“It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in five years.”
— John von Neumann, 1949
“I confess that, in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that men would not fly for 50 years. Two years later, we ourselves were making flights. This demonstration of my inability as a prophet gave me such a shock that I have ever since distrusted myself and have refrained from all prediction.” — Wilbur Wright
Everyone clamors for musical birth control, but no one does anything about it. No one, that is, until Paul Lyons, who offered this pressure-activated musical condom in 1991. The patent abstract promises it’s amusing, entertaining, unusual, and “capable of producing a surprise effect.”
The music or voice message may be played once (e.g., an overture or melody may be played for about 20 seconds), or it may be repeated continuously for several minutes to coincide with the duration of coitus.
What to play? That’s up to you — Lyons recommends the 1812 Overture, “The Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, “Happy Birthday to You,” “The Anniversary Waltz,” or “any popular love song.”
In 1950, General Motors condensed the sounds of car trouble into seven types:
The idea was to simplify conversations between mechanics and customers. “Besides telling what the noise is, the driver is expected to report where it comes from and when it happened,” explained Popular Science. “With this report, the mechanic has a good start toward learning why it happened.”
In 1912, workmen digging a tunnel for New York’s new subway discovered a carpeted room decorated with oil paintings, chandeliers, and a grandfather clock.
According to Tracy Fitzpatrick in Art and the Subway, it was the waiting room for an early prototype subway built in 1870 — a block-long tunnel in which a single car was pushed by a giant fan. Funding had failed, and the project had been forgotten.
In 1985 Ralph Piro patented this “self-congratulatory apparatus … which is useful for providing a self-administered pat on the back or a congratulatory gesture.”
(Using one’s own hand for this “places one in a somewhat uncomfortable posture and additionally lacks the placement of a pat in the most desired middle portion of the back.”)
In June 1875, Paul Boyton, “the fearless frogman,” crossed the English Channel enclosed in “Merriman’s Life Preserving Dress,” an inflatable rubber suit designed to float 300 pounds. “Over 1500 persons had assembled on the piers,” reported the Science Record, “and the house-tops in the vicinity were covered with spectators.”
The remarkable suit carried provisions for nine days, and “it is impossible for the body to sink, or, however tossed by a rough sea, to be thrown face downward.” Far from it: Boyton showed crowds how a floating man could display a flag, dispatch a carrier pigeon, build a raft, smoke, read, fish, cook, and shoot.
Ironically, he dazzled his way right out of the record books. Because the miraculous equipage included a sail and a paddle, Boyton’s feat scarcely counts as swimming, and credit for the first channel crossing today generally goes to Matthew Webb, who swam from Dover to Calais two months later the old-fashioned way.
A man about 43 years of age giving the name Joshua Coppersmith has been arrested for attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people by exhibiting a device which he says will convey the human voice any distance over metallic wires. He calls the instrument a ‘telephone,’ which is obviously intended to imitate the word ‘telegraph’ and win the confidence of those who know the success of the latter instrument. Well informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires, as may be done by dots and dashes and signals of the Morse Code. The authorities who apprehended this criminal are to be congratulated and it is hoped that punishment will be prompt and fitting, and that it may serve as an example to other conscienceless schemers who enrich themselves at the expense of their fellow creatures.
— Boston newspaper, 1865, quoted by Edison’s assistant Francis Jehl in Menlo Park Reminiscences, 1937