Every year, thousands of innovative discoveries make it into the spotlight in the hopes that they’ll improve the lives of the masses. While some technology has improved the lives of millions, countless others have fallen into anonymity because of their useless features. Take a look at the past’s most bizarre inventions that debuted with high hopes but fell into oblivion instead.
1. Perm machine
Although it wasn’t as simple as a curling iron or salt spray, attaining curly hair has always been desired in the 1920s and 1930s. With those highly complicated perm-inducing equipment, women back then were forced to choose a far more complicated course of action.
The customers were connected to the machine, where the hairdresser secured each curl with a metal clip. To recreate natural-looking wavy hair, the machine used water, chemicals, and heat.
2. Beauty micrometer
Max Factor’s extravagant-looking beauty micrometer is one of the most famous torturesque beauty inventions of all time. This helmet could be adjusted in 325 different ways, so it could be used on basically anyone. The micrometer was used to reveal unsymmetrical angles, eyes, and everything on a person’s face that was once considered to be wrong. It was used to help makeup artists of that time perform better, highlighting the spots where makeup was needed.
3. Electric beauty mask
This rubber-electric mask might not seem all that foreign to us, since we have many similar ones today, which use LED lights. However, this electric beauty tool used heated coils instead, which were meant to remove wrinkles and improve skin elasticity.
4. Dimple maker
The design of this gadget is a pretty simple one — it consists of 2 knobs connected by a spring that presses into the cheeks of whoever wears it. This method of creating dimples looked pretty promising at the time, but it turned out to be a failure. Unfortunately, dimples come from genetics and this little machine can’t change that.
5. Supreme pedestal hair dryer
Blow dryers were invented in the late nineteenth century, when people thought the bigger, the better. Hairdressers used gigantic hair dryers on their clients. Not only did they come with lots of disadvantages, like not being portable, but some of them even had a helmet part attached to them.
6. Slimming machine
This machine was called a slimming machine, where the user had to put their legs inside it, which was thought to make it slimmer. These types of machines were mainly used by women as a weight loss method. The same type of machine existed for different muscles too, such as ab-slimming machines called fat rollers.
7. Purves Dynasphere
The Dynasphere was a monowheel-designed vehicle that came in both electrical and gas-powered versions. The driver’s seat and the motor of the vehicle stood on one unit, mounted inside the outer part with wheels upon the interior rails of the outer part. The prototype’s steering was very poor, and to move in the desired direction, the driver had to lean in.
8. Window baby cage
Baby cages were invented in 1922 with the sole purpose of toughening up babies to help them withstand common colds better. Infants were thought to develop a certain immunity to mild diseases if they were exposed to cold temperatures, both outside and during cold-water baths.
9. Bonnet hair dryer
The bonnet dryer was introduced to consumers in 1951. It was made of a dryer and a small portable part, which had to be connected to the tube that went into the bonnet. The purpose of this design was to deliver as much heat as possible to the client’s head without wasting any.
The style of the bonnet hair dryer didn’t fade over the years, but it transformed into a more modern-looking gadget, keeping its original purpose.
