Inventions
Things someone had to think of first.
A Hollywood star patented a secret radio system
In 1942 the film actress Hedy Lamarr and the composer George Antheil patented a frequency-hopping system for guiding torpedoes. The Navy shelved it, but its principle lives on in modern wireless technology.
An 18-year-old’s failed medicine set off a fashion craze
In 1856 a student trying to make a malaria drug produced a purple stain instead, and within two years Europe was wearing mauve.
Computers began as looms
The first machine controlled by punched cards was not a calculator. It wove silk.
The chess-playing machine that had a man inside
From 1770, a turbaned mechanical figure beat players across Europe and America at chess. It was a brilliant hoax, and Amazon named a service after it.
The computer that was designed in 1837
Charles Babbage designed a steam-age machine with memory, a processor and punched-card programs, then never finished building it.
The Post-it Note came from a failed glue
A 3M chemist made an adhesive that barely stuck. It took six years and a slipping hymn-book bookmark to find a use for it.
The Victorian internet
Long before email, the telegraph gave the 19th century online romance, hackers, slang and information overload.
Why your keyboard says QWERTY
The layout you type on every day was designed for a machine that no longer exists, and the famous reason for it may be wrong.