Inventions: Crazy Ideas that Don't Seem so Crazy Anymore

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." Charles Durell, director for the U.S. Patent Office- 1899.

Simon Newcomb, professor of mathematics and astronomy, was one of the most respected scientists of his time. He was the first American since Benjamin Franklin to be made a member of the Institute of France. So, when he wrote an article in 1903 proving (yes, proving) that it was scientifically impossible that a heavier than air machine would ever be able to fly unless some yet undiscovered force of nature were found (think anti-gravity) it was taken as established fact. Good thing the Wright brothers didn't read scientific literature, because just a few weeks later they made their first flight at Kittyhawk.

Unfortunately that didn't settle the matter, though. It would take five years before the Wrights' accomplishments would be widely acknowledged. In spite of public demonstrations, photographs, and written statements of local officials, the Wrights were mocked by educated people everywhere for five years after their initial flight.

The press certainly had their fun with the crazy notion of flying machines: Scientific American published an article in January 1905 that wondered why Santa Clause hadn't yet found out about the miraculous invention. In 1906 the Herald Tribune ran an article titled "Flyers or Liars?" It wasn't until Theodore Roosevelt ordered a demonstration in 1908 at Ft. Meyers that the Wrights were vindicated. The Wrights were hardly alone, though, in having been dismissed as kooks for their world-transforming discoveries.

Some of the most hilarious (in retrospect) words ever spoken have been the dismissals issued by skeptics against inventors of "impossible" technologies.

Undoubtedly Robert H. Goddard sympathized with the Wrights. He was a contemporary of theirs whose obsession was rocketry. His ultimate ambition: sending a rocket to the moon. In 1914 he applied for and received two patents. The first for a multi-staged rocket, and the second for a liquid-fueled rocket. Published accounts tended to focus on Goddard's thoughts regarding a moon rocket, leading the New York Times to state that the physics professor: "only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." Goddard didn't live to see the first moon rocket, but the methodology used to put the Soviet space probe Luna 2 on the moon in 1959 was exactly what he had proposed forty years earlier. On July 17, 1969, the New York Times ran a retraction of their snide attack on Goddard- much too late for it to have mattered to the man himself since he died in 1945.

Sir William Preece, a famed British scientist, deserves a special place in the Scoffers' Hall of Fame if ever one is created. When Alexander Graham Bell approached him with his nutty invention, the telephone, Preece found it quite useless, stating: "England has plenty of small school boys to run messages." This same genius later proclaimed Thomas Edison's idea for an incandescent electric light "a completely idiotic idea."

Ironically, Preece worked under another inventor who had once been described as a "charlatan" by his colleagues for his work with electricity: Michael Faraday. Faraday's Law, the Faraday Effect, and the Faraday Cage all bear witness to his unrivaled importance to scientific advancement.

Another "crackpot" was Nicola Tesla. Everyone who knew anything laughed at his assertion the Earth could resonate electrically at 7Hz, 14Hz, 21Hz, etc., all the way up into the tens of kilohertz, a phenomenon he said he discovered during radio observations of lightning storms. The 1950s saw Tesla vindicated and the phenomenon he observed is now referred to as the Schumann resonances. Actually, many of his ideas that were dismissed in his lifetime have since proven correct. Tesla is sometimes called "the man who invented the twentieth century," so far-reaching was his influence. He is credited with inventing the radio, the alternating current power grid, the brushless AC motor, and much much more.

You'd think by now open minds would prevail. Tell that to Dr Raymond V. Damadian. He is one of the inventors of MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging. According to Damadian he had trouble finding financial backing because: "theoretical physicists claimed to have done calculations demonstrating that my idea was beyond what the theory of what physics would allow."

The examples of scientists who changed the world after being ridiculed, mocked, and debunked are too numerous to cover here. Since Galileo was imprisoned by the Inquisition for his oddball insistance that the earth went around the sun people who dare to challenge orthodoxy have been subjected to all manner of insult. Nearly every accepted scientific theory and nearly every technology of today started its life a hare-brained scheme cooked up by fool- a fool we now venerate as a genius.

In 1987 the Boston Globe ran a story about sociologist Michael J. Mahoney, a Penn State professor who sent out doctored scientific studies for peer review, changing bits of data so that the results either confirmed or refuted the targeted reviewer's favored theories. According to Mahoney: "When the results ran contrary to the reviewer's theoretical beliefs the procedures were berated and the manuscript was rejected. When the results 'confirmed' the reviewers beliefs, the same procedures were lauded and the manuscript was recommended for publication." Keep in mind the studies in either case had been tinkered with so all were wrong.

Seems like grandma was right when she used to say, "the more things change the more they stay the same." It's a safe assumption that there are dozens of inventors and scientists out there right now being mocked for ideas that will seem commonplace in twenty years. So, best be careful what you mock today, (especially in print) because those words could seem laughably ironic someday. Which is not to say that most people labeled crackpots are not actually crackpots. But some clearly aren't.

Who knows? Cold Fusion, telekinesis, UFOs, and their eccentric relatives could all be accepted facts in the future. Heck there could be some guy building a time machine in his basement right now who won't get anyone to take him seriously for a few more decades, though he probably already is aware of just when it will be. Of course, that's impossible. But a lot of things that were once officially impossible are now unremarkable. One thing is certain. We haven't reached the limits of possibility just yet.