This list looks at some amazing past inventions that have been lost. Some may be cause for skepticism but almost all of the items here are things that we would definitely love to understand better today. Keep an open mind as some entries are famous for their part in conspiracy theories. Be sure to list other lost or suppressed inventions in the comments.
Greek fire was an incendiary weapon used by the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines typically used it in naval battles to great effect as it could continue burning even on water. The ingredients and the processes of manufacture and deployment of Greek fire were very carefully guarded military secrets. So strict was the secrecy that the composition of Greek fire was lost, and remains a source of speculation to this day. Consequently, the “mystery” of the formula has long dominated the research into Greek fire. Despite this almost exclusive focus however, Greek fire is best understood as a complete weapon system of many components, all of which were needed to operate together to render it effective.
Orgone energy is a hypothetical form of energy first proposed and promoted in the 1930s by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. It is claimed that orgone is a manifestation of the Freudian concept of libido. Reich saw orgone as a universal bioenergetic force lying behind and causing much, if not all, observable phenomena. Reich developed a device – an “orgone accumulator” for clinical trials and tests. From the 1950s onwards, the FDA became involved in aggressively investigating healthcare providers who were offering treatment not accepted by mainstream researchers, and in particular by the American Medical Association. Reich was one of the therapists who was targeted. On February 10, 1954, the U.S. Attorney for Maine, acting on behalf of the FDA, filed a complaint seeking a permanent injunction under Sections 301 and 302 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, to prevent interstate shipment of orgone accumulators and to ban some of Reich’s writing. The court complied and ordered that all accumulators and their parts were to be destroyed. All written material that discussed how to use the accumulators was also to be destroyed. It also banned ten of Reich’s books that mentioned orgone energy, until such time as references to orgone were deleted.
Schauberger and his works have become part of an internet-based conspiracy theory claiming that Schauberger invented free energy/perpetual motion devices and that this was “covered up” by the US government. While, perpetual motion devices are impossible under basic laws of physics as they violate the fundamental concept of conservation of energy, Schauberger never claimed to have invented perpetual motion machines, but instead stated that he used the Earth’s natural power. After the Second World War, Schauberger was apprehended by US intelligence agents, and kept in custody for 9 months. They confiscated all his documents and prototypes, and interrogated him to determine his activities during the war.
Some people, including a number of doctors and biochemists, believe ozone has remarkable healing properties. The advent of precise medical ozone generators has only recently allowed the mechanisms, action and possible toxicity of ozone to be evaluated by clinical trials. But despite anecdotal evidence of ozone therapy having caused remission in a variety of diseases, therapeutic use of ozone is not endorsed by health authorities or medical associations in any English speaking country, and most US states prohibit the marketing of ozone generators, its medical use, and even research and clinical trials of ozone therapy, so that doctors risk losing their medical licenses by administering or prescribing ozone therapies.
In 1956, the aviation trade publication Interavia reported that Thomas Townsend Brown had made substantial progress in anti-gravity or electro-gravitic propulsion research. Top U.S. aerospace companies had also become involved in such research which may have become a classified subject by 1957. Though the effect he discovered has been proven to exist by many others, Brown’s work was controversial because others and even he himself believed that this effect could explain the existence and operation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Brown’s research has since become something of a popular pursuit around the world, with amateur experimenters replicating his early experiments in the form of “lifters” powered by high-voltage.
Eugene Mallove was a notable proponent and supporter of research into cold fusion. He authored the book Fire from Ice, which details the 1989 report of table-top cold fusion from Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann at the University of Utah. The book claims the team did produce “greater-than-unity” output energy in an experiment, which supposedly was successfully replicated on several occasions. Mallove claims that the results were suppressed through an organized campaign of ridicule from mainstream physicists. He was fatally beaten May 14, 2004 in Norwich, Connecticut by an unknown assailant. His violent death was suspected by some to be related to the nature of his work.
Stanley Meyer produced nine patents relating to his “water powered” car. He was subsequently sued by two investors and the court found Meyer guilty of “gross and egregious fraud”, ordering him to repay the investors their $25,000. Following his sudden death, an autopsy showed that he died of a cerebral aneurysm. Meyer’s supporters continue to claim that he was assassinated by ‘Big Oil’, Arab death squads, Belgian assassins, or the US Government in order to suppress his inventions.
At one point while experimenting with mechanical oscillators, Nikola Tesla allegedly generated a resonance of several buildings causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew he hit the resonance frequency of his own building and belatedly realizing the danger he was forced to apply a sledge hammer to terminate the experiment, just as the astonished police arrived. The Discovery Channel’s popular MythBusters show examined Tesla’s claim that he had created an “Earthquake Machine” in their 60th episode. They tested the physical phenomenon known as mechanical resonance on a traffic bridge, which today are built to withstand such forces. While a single I-beam of steel was deflected several feet in each direction by their oscillator, and they reportedly felt the bridge shaking many yards away, there were no “earth shattering” effects. It is worth indicating that, in the time of the event undertaken by Tesla, buildings were not built to withstand such resonance.
Flexible glass is a legendary lost invention from during the reign of Roman Emperor Tiberius Caesar (between 14 CE-37 CE). As recounted by Isadore of Seville, the craftsman who invented the technique brought before Caesar a drinking bowl made of flexible glass, and Caesar threw it to the floor, whereupon the material dented, rather than shattering. The inventor was able to simply repair the dent with a small hammer. After the inventor swore to the Emperor that he alone knew the technique of manufacture, Caesar had the man beheaded, fearing such material could undermine the value of gold and silver.
Father Ernetti is fascinating not just because of his work as an exorcist in the Venice region, but more especially because of his work on the “chronovision”. In the 1960s he is said to have claimed he constructed a time viewer of sorts in the 1950s, as part of a group that supposedly included Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi and Wernher von Braun. The machine was called the Chronovisor, and could allegedly see and hear events of the past. According to an explanation by Ernetti, the luminous energy and sound that objects emanate are recorded in their environment, such that proper use of the chronovisor could reconstruct from said energy the images and sounds of a specific set of events from the past. Through the viewing screen of the chronovisor Father Ernetti claimed to have witnessed a performance in Rome in 169 BC of the now-lost tragedy, Thyestes, by the father of Latin poetry, Quintus Ennius. He also claimed to have witnessed Christ dying on the cross. On his death-bed in 1994, Father Ernetti said that he attended a meeting of all the people involved in the chronovision at the Vatican during which the only existing machine was destroyed.
This article is licensed under the GFDL because it contains quotations from Wikipedia.
@frushka (52): Where can I buy me one of them?
@feen (48): Yeah right. I believe that too – along with UFO’s, fluoride as mind control, and the moon landing hoax. Where’s the proof?
Hey , these facts are great…I was very much surprised by the Chronovision feature that can capture the past incidents… Hats off… Any way by which we can get more details over it…
@Bjart (59): what about creationism?
Well, you’re right about one thing… it was invented.
sorry, didn’t mean to make you mad
i return after a long absince from posting and thats the greeting you give me though?
I love this site. It’s the first thing I go to in the morning. I especially like lists like this one. The subject matter is great and I love reading the comments. Kudos to JFrater.
On an unrelated note (sorry)-
OUCHAN-what is your gravatar? I can’t make it out and when I try to enlarge it I just get pixels. Thanks-it’s driving me nuts (don’t know why!).
When I was in my teens I was fasinated with perpetual motion to such an extent that I wanted to do an experiment.
I used an bicycle rim with a new shaft and greased bearings and rested the shaft ends into a metal stand ( cradle ), and fixed a fairly big magnet to the rim, and a second one on a wooden rod, so when you turned the rin the two magnets would pass each other face on with +- 3 mm to spare.
So each time the magnet on the rotating rim passed the stationary magnet positive against negative it would keep this wheel turning.
***** this was 40 odd years ago, I thought I would win the nobel prize or something – but alas not to be magnets also wear out.
Thanks Jamie -nice list.
A guy I knew when I was at Uni was an absolute freak. Even watching him walk around campus was funny, as he’d run for 30 seconds or so and then slow to a crawl for a couple of minutes.
He was also a physics genius.
Last I heard, he’d been accepted for post-grad studies, and he’d come up with an idea that would remove the need for power-lines. He’d been told not to speak about it to anyone because there were vested interests out there that might see fit to kill him.
When I read #5 “He was fatally beaten May 14, 2004 in Norwich, Connecticut by an unknown assailant. His violent death was suspected by some to be related to the nature of his work.” I thought immediately of this guy.
I wonder what happened to him.
@undaunted warrior (66):
that is actualy the same principal behind the anti-gravity on the list, to make it true perpectual motion it would require eltro magnets, and a vavuum space, and the spinning of the wheel charging the magnets, becuase you also get gravity slowing it all down, and air aswell (which is why perpectual motion doesn’t work even in a vaccum you got gravity)
@taos777 (68): Friction also plays a big part in it, no matter how greased the axle is. Plus air causes friction.
There is a song written about almost everything.
Those energy stimulators
Just turn your eyeballs into craters
But an orgone accumulator
Is a superman creator
It’s no social integrator
It’s a one man isolator
It’s a back brain stimulator
It’s a cerebral vibrator
I’ve got an orgone accumulator
And it makes me feel grater
I’ll see you sometime later
When I’m through with my accumulator. – Hawkwind
taos777 @ (68) Thanks for that info, very interesting, always been fascinated with this topic.
But as mentioned in my earlier comment this was many many years ago, and being a young teenager at the time I though to myself that when I patent this, I would be one of the worlds riches guys.
My bubble has popped so many times over the years that I dont even chew gum anymore.
Thanks for the reply.
@taos777 (68): That was not Jfrater but a dirty rotten imposter. I’m glad to see you back, rest assured.
Glad I came back to this site some new very interesting items which I wanted to know more about. Great work on your site.
I love a good conspiracy story.
Some very interesting points have been made here, it is refreshing to see that your site gets quality visitors.
Interesting…while the chronovision is the least plausible, if it did exist and could be reproduced, the others on this list could be rediscovered much more easily. Then one could combine the anti-gravity, cold fusion, Greek fire and earthquake generator to become an awesome supervillain. Sure, you could sell them for trillions of dollars, but villainy is funner.
@timmar68 (65):
Now I have to look at that gravatar aswell. My guess, its someone wearing a batman helmet, hugging a dog.
(what do I win?)
@timmar68 (65): @chubbmeister (77):
You should check out the forums. Many of us (including oouchan) use the same avatars there and they are a bit bigger.
That was an interesting bit of reading, although a couple seem pretty obvious. For example, couldn’t greek fire be explained by simple oil? And flexible glass by plastic?
Hieronymus machines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_machine
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=516534
http://www.lifetechnology.org/hieronymus.htm
@timmar68 (65):
@chubbmeister (77):
Remember you asked!
It’s from a yaoi manga I read. It’s two guys kissing.
@Shifty (78): Thanks Shifty!
many disproved by mythbusters
the anti gravity device
the water fuel cell
greek fire
@undaunted warrior (71): “My bubble has popped so many times over the years that I dont even chew gum anymore.” I gotta remember that one.
Cold fusion didn’t start out as a hoax, but the results where proved to be unrepeatable. The state of Utah funded the NCFI (National Cold Fusion Institute) with GE, but produced no results supporting the existence of cold fusion .i think there is something mysterious about low temperature energy as you can see from this vid
ice vs thermite Mythbusters
“let’s not forget that Einstein rejected the early formulation of the big bang – who is to say he was right this time?” He rejected idea of big bang but said that math behind it is solid. And he later accepted it.
greek fire can’t be disproved tom as it was a historical fact so mythbusters didnt disprove it they just couldnt replicate it.
while i don’t believe in most of these inventions it does seem suspicious that most were murdered, attacked, had their inventions destroyed or were confined to mental homes.
I remember story similar to that of flexible glass. Some medieval inventor made something similar to machine gun. His king decided that such weapon would ruin art of war and applied his art of beheading on poor subject
great list! i love the science and conspiracy theory ones. more of these and less sporty ones!
if greek fire translates to liquid fire maybe it was just some sort of acid?
also watching the simpsons when i was younger made me think perpetual motion machines were real. “it just keeps going faster and faster”
LOL ouchan. I love it! I thought it was someone chugging a beer or something as I saw what looked like an arm raised in the air. So, I was sort of right-an arm IS raised, just holding something else!
@jaglarxwx (85):
thank you for the vid, but it isn’t the same as cold fusion, it still required the heat of the thermite, then again cold fusion itself still uses heat to boil water water and turn a turbine (like a regular nuclear plant) it is just a cheaper way of doing it, a metal in heavy water, the metal reacts with the heavy water (heavy water is h3o, extra hydrogen) there by releasing the extra hydrogen which is hot, then that heats up a tank of water, boiling the water, heating water in a pipe, the water in the pipe turning a turbine
that’s the best i can remember, been years since i studied it
perpetual motion= The Cox Clock. look it up.
Telsa’s Vibrators: Thats right folks! Get them now while they last! Topple The Tallest Skyscrapers, BEFORE THEY ARE FULLY ERECTED! That’s right. If you’re like me and believe the modern age of architecture is a bloody eyesore, then a Tesla Vibrator is for you! With a device that is so small, it’ll fit in your pocket or concealed in your fist! you can’t go wrong!
But thats not all! If you buy now, I will throw in the Wild -N-Wacky Vibatronic 2000. The kids love them. All they got to do is stand on the little platform and click the switch and AWAY THEY BUZZ INTO VIBRATION FUN! But watchout for Grampa. The Vibatronic 2000 isn’t just for kids, Isn’t that right Samuel Longhorn Clemens?
-Speaking of Good Vibrations, John Keely’s Bizarro World of Invented Apparatuseseses.
-All those other telephones before THE telephone.
-Who never wanted to levitate? huh?
-I thought some US corporation stole all of Schauberger’s “ideas”(Ive always loved that picture of him ((although very cropped here)) with his power station).
then I recall that after Telsa died his hotel room was supposably cleared of invention paperwork. Its easy to start a conspiracy, yet I find them sometimes more of interest than the truth. yet from an idiot’s standpoint. The complex frame work of conspiracy theories are really amazing inventions in themselves.
Who was that artist? Lombardi, Mark Lombardi. Hung himself.
-Thinking of the different booms in Free Energy thought activity.
W.R.- Misterije Organizma
LSD
never heard of Father Marcello Pellegrino Ernetti before.
Chronovision makes me think of 3D glasses and all those crazy William Castle cinematic gimmick gadgets like “Smell O Vision”
which has triggered the whole “something-O-something”s as titled iventions
Belief-O-Matic, for instance. What, no Lafayette Hubbard here?
You know the Raelians were the first to clone a human, they had to publicly state their success the way they did to weed out the majority that had been fooled by the horrendously funded so-called “real scientists” and their fake ethical (ie: we care) slow pacing. Being true pioneers in the field, Cloneaid further suppressed themselves by fabricating the cloning as a hoax. So, by hoaxing a hoax, after sending out “the signal”, the true rebirth was able to take place and The Receiver is on it’s way.
Oh yeah right!, a monk in the 50′s invented and built a machine that can view and hear the pass. What a bunch of crap.
Cool list. Wouldn’t it be neat if the chronovision was real? That would be a great tool for writers to look back into the past and glean details for period works!
Also, it would be fun to see history as it happened.
Lisa come here a minute….
Yes dad
“in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!”
-Homer in reference to #8
@taos777 (91)
Heavy water is not H3O. Chemistry and physics are a little different.
@iamcanjim (96):
ok its 2h2o, little 2 near top then little two at bottom
deuterium, also called heavy hydrogen
but it still the same principle mentioned above
@Maximuz04 (95):
which episode was that again? now i want to watch it
Wilhelm Reich? Geez…
Without knowing more about #4 it would seem to be more of a urban myth. I must research this bad boy to figure out if someone is having us on. Water is lovely when in pretty little tanks, but can it create energy?
Poorly researched list.
Amazing hardly describes any of these things. About the only credible things on your list are Greek Fire, Flexible glass and the Earthquake machine.
Next time include PROPER technologies. Damascus Steel? Tesla’s Death ray? Antikythera Mechanism? etc
The list is you’re starting point. Build something. Prove it or disprove it, that’t the fun part. Even a hoax has something that can be expanded with a different point of view. Get off your butt and invent something. Then bar the door, I hear “them” coming for you because this is too good to get out. Or, maybe “them” are here to give you a large bag of cash for your idea. I pick door number two.
From #1: “…Father Ernetti claimed to have witnessed a performance in Rome in 169 BC of the now-lost tragedy, Thyestes, by the father of Latin poetry, Quintus Ennius. He also claimed to have witnessed Christ dying on the cross.”
Hmmm, isn’t it amazing that he just happens upon those two events and not just some jamoke mucking out a horse stall?
Reminds me of those celebrities who claim to have been reincarnated. Somehow they know who they were previously and it’s always someone like Marie Antoinette, never some average farm girl.
@95 taos777
Its the episode where the teachers go on strike
http://www.thehutchisoneffect.com
Niiice lol its a bit strange thou ;D
http://matts-people-search.ws
just a thought here: could flexible glass have been an early form of plastic?
Make another list!
JFrater: as a composer, you’d also want to check out some of Percy Grainger’s “Free Music” machines as part of this list- while there are (non-working) prototypes for some of them, others have been lost (or damaged beyond repair.) If some of them would have been around (such as the one which he tried to affect pitch oscillations and create audible glissandi using brain waves), who knows what music you’d be coming up with now.
http://www.rainerlinz.net/NMA/articles/FreeMusic.html#3
Very cool list, been reading them for a while now and I am definitely addicted to this site. I was surprised to see Eugene Mallove on here as he was a family friend…however, the police do NOT think his murder was related to his work. They think it was a botched robbery.
Random comment here:
I’ve always believed that time travel was possible, but it would involve finding a vehicle (most likely a jet of some sort) that was capable of moving extremely quickly. Essentially, the vehicle would just have to be fast enough to make it all the way around the Earth in less than one day, but for practical reasons it would need to be much faster. (Who wants to fly for twelve days to end up a few hours back in time?)
Thus, if you wanted to go back in time, you simply flew very quickly against the rotation of the Earth, crossing the international date line once for each day you want to go back (taking into account travel time as well). To go forward, you simply fly with the rotation of the Earth, but faster.
Also, it should be noted that you would still age up over the time you were gone. Therefore, if you went back in time for a year, you would still be a year older when you returned, even if you flew back to the same day you left.
This is a very impractical and quite unpleasant idea, yes, and the energy and risks taken are very high. However, I feel like it would work.
I’ve also always felt that time travel in itself is futile, and that time has already taken your interference in stride and made accommodations, that if you went back in time to kill Hitler or something that you couldn’t. Time runs on its rails.
Could it have been that the “flexible glass” was just plastic? It kind of sounds like it, but I don’t know if they would have had the resources or anything back then. Just a thought.
*****in great list man. Absolutely love it
@Zach (110):
I hopr to God you were being sarcastic. I don’t think you are though.
Flaws in your “idea”:
• When you fly across the Earth, you’re not going backwards in time at all. Timezones are a concept invented by humans to have a unified system where local time is measured with respect to the sun and that time is then relative to the reference time (Greenwich Mean Time) by a number of hours.
• Travelling at any speed (large fraction of c) would incur far too much friction in the atmosphere to ever be viable using a jet engine (acceleration is far too low). Even space is far from frictionless as a collision from one of the few and far between atoms would take a large chunk of momentum from the craft. Current technology optimized to it’s fullest could not overcome this.
• If we take into account special relativity, and you did travel in a very fast craft, and you went away for one earth year (wrt to Earth), you would age less than a year (you would feel like you went away for a day, but the people of Earth would all be a year older).
I sure wish the Evony woman would cover herself.
the number 1 guy was definitely full of *****. ***** you Father Ernetti, you lying bastard
This is
Soldier John Titor
- calling-
Doctor Benway
clack clak clak
-come in Doctor Benway.
clack clak clak
Soldier Titor here
-…-
Yes, This is Doc Benway
-…-
interesting…
Tesla’s wireless transmission of energy: Tesla built it and it worked. However, for a number of reasons it was not practical. (I believe noise was a factor, but I may be remembering things wrong.) However, I recently read somewhere that new technology has made Tesla’s idea viable again.
Tesla’s Earthquake machine. I don’t think he built this with the intention of creating earthquakes. In any case, to make a true earthquake, the energy he would need would be impossible to generate. However, the device he did build would have had some use in building destruction (instead of dynamite) and even as a weapon, at least around the time he built it. Nowadays building might be too strong.
Finally, I believe there is nothing wrong with the idea of cold fusion, it’s just that no one has done it yet. Before the Wright Brothers, most people thought heavier-than-air flight was possible, but no one has achieved it yet. A couple of scientists did fake their results, which casts a pall over the ENTIRE concept!
Wow, someone needs to write a story from alternate sixties where all these inventions work…
#1 made me LOL! How can anyone believe a priest to have time-travelled, or at least view an event of the past using a cabinet filled with crap, pieces and pieces of crap..(if that cabinet called chrono…whatever really exist in the first place)..Common man, a PRIEST?!!?Known for their teaching full of lies! It was actually funny that the priest-turned-scientist-while-still-being-a-priest claimed that he actually saw Christ being crucified when in fact Christ was not even hang on a cross..Silly, stupid and a lying priest like all the priest in the world now…