Failed Inventions Museum Opens In Austria

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Hoosiernorm
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Failed Inventions Museum Opens In Austria

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/1 ... weird-news
Necessity is the mother of invention, but is a museum dedicated to inventions that didn't work a necessary invention?

Fritz Gall thinks so.

A failed inventor himself, Gall decided to create a museum in his home town of Herrnbaumgarten, Austria, dedicated to the inventions that, unlike the personal computer, lightbulb or even wheel, have no chance of changing history -- or anything.

The inventions on display at the Museum of Nonsense are much more mundane, according to The Nation. They're bizarre.

For instance, let's say your at a public event and you don't want to be recognized on camera. One inventor dreamed up the "portable anonymizer" -- a stick with a black bar that you'd hold in front of your eyes -- to obscure yourself from the public's prying eyes.

Other inventions that nobody will ever use include a portable hole straight out of a "Roadrunner" cartoon, a fully transportable hat stand, a bristleless toothbrush for people with no teeth, and a fits-anyone jumper with sleeves in various lengths.

None of these inventions were successful, but, apparently, the musuem is.
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Apollonius
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Re: Failed Inventions Museum Opens In Austria

Post by Apollonius »

The Telharmonium is probably my favourite failed invention:



http://www.synthmuseum.com/magazine/0102jw.html

The Idea

In 1890's, Thaddeus Cahill was a lawyer and an inventor living in Washington DC. Before inventing the Telharmonium, he mostly invented devices for Pianos and Typewriters. In 1893, after fooling around with his telephone, trying to broadcast music through the phone lines, Cahill had the idea for the Telharmonium. Before the 1920's there was no way to amplify electrical signals. So in order to hear sounds through the telephone, you had to put the receiver up to your ear. Cahill knew that if he could generate a large enough of an electrical signal, and if he stuck a cone on the telephone receiver (much like a gramophone cone) he could transmit music through the telephone that could be heard by an audience. He figured that if he could send music through the telephone at the proper volume, he could set up a tidy business providing music to hotels, restaurants, and even private homes. So, in a large way, Cahill invented what we know of today as "Muzak". By 1896 he had his invention worked out and applied for a patent. In 1898 he was granted, patent #580,035 for the "Art of and Apparatus for Generating and Distributing Music Electrically." In his patent, Cahill used the term "synthesizing." This proves, some say, that the Telharmonium was truly the world's first Synthesizer.


The machine that produced the music out of the public view in the basement of Telharmonic Hall at the corner of 39th and Broadway covered over half an acre consisting of hundreds of huge multiple-alternator steel rotors and dynamos, transformers, tone mixers, rheostats, and induction coils, as well as thousands of relays and miles of wiring. Nearly two thousand switches filled ten separate panels, with the keyboard itself having banks of 672 keys, and multiple banks of pedals, which took two musicians to play.


At the turn of the century radio was full of static and the quality of sound was nothing remotely good enough for the inventor of the Telharmonium, Thaddeus Cahill, who demanded musical and audio perfection. Special Telharmony telephone lines were run to fashionable restaurants and hotels, where well-heeled customers could hear the wonders of “music on tap”. This was in the day before amplification of sound or loudspeakers (pre-figured with this system) had been invented, so the Telharmonium needed raw power in order to be heard.

The big problem was that Telharmonium and telephone wires ran side by side and since Telharmonium signals were sometimes millions of times stronger than telephone signals, they easily bled into the phone lines, so that telephone customers would get a concert interrupting their phone call, something which ended any possibility of partnership.
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Miss_Faucie_Fishtits
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Re: Failed Inventions Museum Opens In Austria

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Just because it's so kewl.........

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Hoosiernorm
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Re: Failed Inventions Museum Opens In Austria

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http://flyingmoose.org/truthfic/edison.htm

WHY DOLORES CHUMSKY HATES THOMAS EDISON
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Typhoon
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Re: Failed Inventions Museum Opens In Austria

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Hoosiernorm wrote:http://flyingmoose.org/truthfic/edison.htm

WHY DOLORES CHUMSKY HATES THOMAS EDISON
I had no idea. Fascinating.
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Hoosiernorm
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Re: Failed Inventions Museum Opens In Austria

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gyu7_mk1PiE
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Re: Failed Inventions Museum Opens In Austria

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b-Jh1hJhPdQ
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