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Self-driving cars, selfie sticks, drones, touchscreen
devices, e-cigarettes, jetpacks, and many other things seem like fairly
modern inventions. Indeed, most of their “inventors” list them as newly
invented and even go as far as seeking patents. But the fact is, many of
these “inventions” have already been in existence for quite some time.
They may have earlier lookalikes that ended up not going into production
or that went into limited production due to one reason or another. Some
also made it into full production but were recalled due to poor sales.
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Selfie Sticks
The first selfie stick was invented long before the first handheld
mobile device was made. This 1925 photograph, for instance, may show a
couple taking a photograph with a camera attached to a stick. However, a
selfie stick was definitely invented by the Japanese man Hiroshi Ueda in
the 1980s. A photographer and worker at the Minolta camera company,
Hiroshi made the selfie stick because he and his wife were unable to
take pictures of themselves during a trip to Europe. (When he asked a
boy to take pictures of them, the boy ran off with the camera.)
Frustrated, he invented something that would allow him take a picture of
himself: He called it the “extender stick.” Since the iPhone really
hadn’t been invented yet, a small camera was to be attached to one end
of the stick. It also had a small mirror in its front so that users
could see how they would look in the photograph. He patented the
“extender stick” in 1983. The product was mass produced for sale but it
was a commercial failure. The quality of the pictures was low. Besides,
previous research showed that the women back then were embarrassed by
the idea of taking pictures of themselves. The selfie stick was then
reinvented by Wayne Fromm in the year 2000, three years before Hiroshi’s
patent expired. Fromm called his the “quik pod.” He believes he is the
inventor of today’s selfie sticks and has even sued several other selfie
stick producers. When asked about Hiroshi’s selfie sticks, he said they
were “prior art.” |
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Touchscreens
In 2007, Apple released the first iPhone: a full touchscreen phone,
complete with its own virtual keypad. To many, Apple had done something
new, something never seen before. They had made the first touchscreen
phone. But this was incorrect: Apple did not make the first touchscreen
phone, nor was the touchscreen a new invention.
To start with, a year before the first iPhone was released, LG had
introduced a full touchscreen phone. Even that was not the first,
though. The world’s first touchscreen phone was IBM’s Simon, which was
released in 1992. And touchscreen technology even predates the Simon.
The first touchscreen device was a tablet made by E.A. Johnson in 1965
that was used by air traffic controllers until 1995. Bent Stumpe and
Frank Beck made the first capacitive touchscreen in the early ‘70s.
Unlike Johnson’s tablet, it could not be pressed with the fingers.
Instead, it required a stylus. In 1971, Samuel Hurst developed the first
resistive touchscreen, which he called the “elograph.” It responded to
the fingers as well as a stylus. In 1985, HP invented the world’s first
touchscreen computer, called the HP-150. In 1993, Apple also released
its first touchscreen device—the Newton Personal Digital Assistant. The
product was a flop, recording low sales. |
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Drones
The first drone can be traced back to 1916 when British inventor
Archibald Low (shown above) designed and flew the first unmanned
radio-controlled vehicle. The drone was made to counterattack German
Zeppelin airships, and it also carried out ground attacks during World
War I. It was made with wood and tin, its wings taken from the lower
wing of another biplane. Overall, the drone was somewhat unsuccessful
because the noise from its engine interfered with its radio. The Sopwith
Aircraft Company also tried making a drone in 1916. They placed the
radio equipment at the tail so that the engine would not interfere with
its signal, but their drone never flew as it was damaged in an accident
on the ground. Low would try flying his drone again in 1917 when he flew
it in front of some senior military officers. It was launched from the
back of a lorry and flew for some time before crashing due to engine
failure, almost killing the military officers present. |
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Head-Mounted Computer Displays
In 2012, Google introduced Google Glass (at right in the photo above), a
computer you can wear on your face. Someone wearing the glasses can be
walking down the street or doing any everyday task while simultaneously
seeing an overlay of calendar appointments, messages, and subway alerts.
They can make video calls and even upload live videos to the Internet
while on the move, without ever needing to use their hands. Google Glass
might be cool, it might be new, it might be revolutionary, but it’s
definitely not the first pair of wearable computer glasses.
The first wearable computer glasses were made by Edward Thorp and Claude
Shannon in 1961. In 1968, Ivan Sutherland made the “Sword of Damocles.”
It was the first head-mounted computer display and an early variant of
all wearable computer glasses we have today. In 1980, Steve Mann, known
today as the father of wearable computing, made the “WearComp” (at left
in the photo above), a pair of tech-enhanced glasses that was capable of
communicating wirelessly with other computers and could share videos. He
continued to work on the glasses over the years, and by 1999, he had
come up with a pair of glasses that looked like Google Glass, or rather,
that Google Glass looks like. He called it the “EyeTap.” |
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E-Cigarettes
E-cigarettes first started becoming popular in 2012. They work by
heating a nicotine fluid to mimic a real cigarette. Their invention is
usually credited to Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik, who reportedly created
it after he dreamed that he was drowning in a cloud of vapor. His father
had died of lung cancer caused by cigarettes. He himself was an
unrepentant smoker who had unsuccessfully tried quitting by using a
nicotine patch.
The fact is, Hon Lik is not the first person to invent the e-cigarette.
Way back in 1963, Herbert Gilbert made the world’s first device that
could be used to inhale tobacco-flavored air. In Gilbert’s original
version, there was no form of combustion and it was free of nicotine. He
later designed a prototype that used a battery to create heat. He also
used different flavors of water to create steam. He presented his
prototypes to different chemical, pharmaceutical, and tobacco companies,
but they simply turned down his prototypes.
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Autonomous Cars
Also called self-driving cars, autonomous cars have been making the news
recently. Chief among them are Google’s self-driving cars. Google’s
driverless cars have traveled over 480,000 kilometers (300,000 mi) with
only two accidents, both of which were caused by humans. But
self-driving cars aren’t new. In fact, their concepts have arguably been
around since the days of Leonardo da Vinci, who invented a
spring-powered cart with a programmable steering device.
More recently, however, General Motors made a self-driving car in 1958
that adjusted its steering wheel based on the alternating currents given
off by a wire placed inside the road. While the vehicle did actually
drive itself, it does not qualify as the first autonomous vehicle
because it depended on wires placed inside the ground. The world’s first
autonomous vehicle was made by S. Tsugawa and several of his colleagues
at Japan’s Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. However, German
engineer Ernst Dickinson is regarded as the pioneer of the autonomous
car. In 1987, he developed the VaMoRs which was capable of traveling
more than 90 kilometers per hour (55 mph) for about 20 kilometers (12
mi). Seven years later, he made the VaMP, which could recognize road
signs, know its own position in a lane, detect other vehicles, and even
decide when to change lanes. And a year after that, he and his team made
another autonomous vehicle which traveled from Germany to Denmark. The
vehicle had a maximum speed of 180 kilometers per hour (111 mph) and was
controlled by a human for about 5 percent of the journey.
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Flying Bicycles
A few years back, a flying bicycle called the “Paravelo” was invented.
And it isn’t called a flying bicycle for fun. It is a bicycle (with a
large parachute on top) that actually flies. It travels around 25
kilometers per hour (15 mph) on land and 40 kilometers per hour (25 mph)
in the air. It can also fly up to a height of 1,200 meters (4,000 ft).
The best part? You don’t need a pilot’s license. The Paravelo has been
called the world’s first flying bicycle, a title we must point out it
does not really own.
The world’s first flying bicycle flew on November 9, 1961, when Derek
Pigott of the University of Southampton flew in a bicycle with an
airplane-like body. It was called the Southampton University Man Powered
Aircraft (sumpac). Derek furiously pedaled the air-bike to get it off
the ground. It then flew 1.8 meters (about 6 ft) above the ground over a
distance of 64 meters (210 ft). While the flight was short and slow, it
still does not change the fact that it was the first bicycle to fly and
at the same time, the first human-powered flight.
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Jetpacks
In 2010, the Martin Aircraft Company introduced a jetpack it called “the
world’s first piratical jetpack.” The jetpack even won a spot in Time‘s
Top 50 Inventions of 2010. While its development has been on since 1981,
the world’s first jetpack is known to have flown in 1958. It was
designed by Wendell Moore, a researcher at Bells Aerosystems. Early
prototypes of Wendell’s jetpack could reach a height of 5 meters (16 ft)
and remain airborne for three minutes. This attracted the attention of
the US Army, which funded the project with $150,000. Several test
flights were later done for the US Army and even for JFK himself. The
army later stopped paying for more research into the project because the
flight time and distance were not convincing enough. NASA also wanted to
use the jetpack for their Apollo 11 mission to serve as backups in case
their lunar module malfunctioned. They later changed their minds, going
for the lunar rover instead. After this setback, Bell discontinued
further research on the jetpack. |
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Bladeless Fans
Simply put, bladeless fans are fans without blades. They work by sucking
in air at their base and then blowing them out through several holes in
their ring. The fan is reported to have been invented by James Dyson,
who calls it the “Air Multiplier.” Just like the flying jetpack, it
earned a spot in Time‘s list of notable inventions of 2009. And just
like the jetpack, it was not the first of its kind. The first bladeless
fan was actually patented in 1981 by a Japanese company called Tokyo
Shiba Electric. Although Tokyo Shiba’s bladeless fan was never
manufactured, James Dyson’s initial design of a bladeless fan design
looked so similar to that of Tokyo Shiba Electric that the patent office
refused to grant him a patent. The patent granted to Tokyo Shiba had
already expired, but the patent office still required something
substantially different before it could grant a new patent to James
Dyson. Dyson’s patent manager, Gill Smith, did not deny the similarities
between both bladeless fans but said the difference between them was the
“technology.”
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