Everyone knows that true innovation requires you to fail and fail better. It’s easy to celebrate the wins, but what about the wins that never were? At Hamilton, innovation’s in our DNA. But, man, do we know how much work it takes—and how timing is everything—to get it just right. So we appreciated reading this article about the ideas that weren’t quite right, but that blazed the way for more brilliant inventions in their wake. Here are just a few of the promising flops that caught our eye.
Thomas Edison’s Electric Pen
The man who invented the lightbulb also created a pen powered by a plugged in battery that wrote by continually punching small holes—like a tattoo gun without ink. While it never quite caught on, Edison sold the patent to a man who eventually transformed it into the mimeograph, which became the first standard office copy machine.
The Monowheel
This crazy contraption where the rider sits inside the wheel debuted in 1869 and has been called “humanity’s most useless vehicle.” But last summer, a team of engineering students from Duke University built and tested a design for the world’s fastest electric monowheel, which looks incredibly fast and cool. What a difference 150 years makes.
The Microsoft Tablet
It seems hard to remember a time before the iPad dominated the tablet pack. But it was Bill Gates and Microsoft that first introduced a tablet in 2002. Because Gates believed it would replace the desktop PC as the consumer computing option of choice, the tablet also came with a hefty PC-like price tag ($2,000). As a result, Apple swooped in with a unique operating system and a new minimalist aesthetic to complement and not replace desktops and laptops.
Ask Jeeves
Remember Ask Jeeves from the 90s? This cartoon butler was the predecessor to Google, and the first search engine to understand natural language queries. The site even signed with high-profile Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz and featured an aggressive merchandising campaign. Oh, Jeeves, we hardly knew ya.
Here’s to the crazy ones.