Every generation has watched a sure-thing invention crash and burn in spectacular fashion. Some of them you lived through. Others you may have only heard about later and marveled that anyone thought they would work at all.
Author and historian Allen J. Wiener has spent years studying the products that promised the world and delivered very little. His take? Invention is a process of trial and error, and most ideas rarely succeed.
“But ultimately, that inventor or another working from their original designs will tinker with it until they find a version that works,” Wiener says. “If the successful inventor stands higher than those who failed before him, it’s often because he is standing on their shoulders.”
Here are seven famous inventions that failed spectacularly and what we can learn from each one.
1. The Paige Compositor (1872–1888)
Long before anyone dreamed of artificial intelligence, inventor James W. Paige built a machine that was supposed to do something similar. Wiener describes it as “a 19th-century version of AI”, a mechanized typesetting system designed to replace multiple workers with a single human operator.
It had 18,000 moving parts. That alone should have been a warning sign.
The famous author Mark Twain was among the investors who backed it. In the end, investors lost a combined $2 million, the equivalent of $65 million today. The machine was “far too imprecise and complex to work efficiently,” Wiener says, and by the time working models were produced, simpler and better devices had already passed it by.
The only surviving Paige Compositor is on display at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut.
Lesson learned: More careful research into the state of the technology might have given investors like Twain reason to pause, Wiener says.
2. New Coke (1985)
If you were drinking Coke in 1985, you remember the uproar. After 99 years, the Coca-Cola Company replaced its original recipe with a sweeter formula and loyal customers were furious.
Wiener says the move was driven by blind taste tests showing that many Coke drinkers actually preferred Pepsi’s sweeter taste. The company panicked and changed the formula to compete. What they did not account for was how people feel about a product they have loved their whole lives.
“In something of a panic, Coca-Cola foisted the sweeter New Coke on its buyers, sparking a huge revolt among longtime Coke drinkers who rejected the sweeter brew,” he says.
After just 79 days, Coca-Cola brought back its original formula.
Lesson learned: The quick taste tests were not enough to gauge how the public would react, Wiener says. Had executives tested it in the larger quantities people normally drank, they likely would have seen the problem coming.
3. Leonardo da Vinci’s Flying Machines and Weapons of War (1480s–1500s)
It is hard to call Leonardo da Vinci a failure at anything. But Wiener points out that da Vinci’s inventions were “some 500 years ahead of their time” and not one of them actually worked.
His flying machines were modeled on the wings of birds. According to Wiener, there are reports that either da Vinci or one of his assistants was nearly killed testing a device similar to today’s hang gliders.
His military designs: a gigantic crossbow meant to function as an early rocket launcher, along with devices resembling modern tanks, helicopters, and multi-barrel guns, survived only as technical drawings in his notebooks. None could be built, because the technology to make them work simply did not exist yet.
Lesson learned: “Leonardo did not really fail in dreaming of flying machines; he just couldn’t make them work in the 15th century,” Wiener says. Later inventors adapted his ideas when technology finally caught up.
4. The Baby Cage (patented 1922)
This one takes a moment to absorb. In the early 20th century, as tuberculosis spread through cities, some doctors believed that fresh air could prevent and even treat the disease. An 1894 book by pediatrician Luther Emmett Holt had also theorized that babies who regularly got fresh air were healthier.
Inventors saw an opportunity. The result was the Baby Cage: a wire cage fastened to the outside of open apartment windows, high above the ground, where babies would sit and breathe in the outdoor air.
Emma Read received the first patent for it in 1922, and for a time it was actually popular.
It eventually failed due to concerns about stability, stricter safety standards, and rising air pollution in cities. Medical thinking also shifted, with pediatricians recommending healthier indoor childcare instead.
Lesson learned: “Think about it: Would you suspend your child in a cage many stories above ground, especially for extended periods?” Wiener asks.
5. The Ford Edsel (1957)
The Ford Edsel did not break down on the side of the road. Mechanically, it worked just fine. But Wiener says it “did fail in nearly every other way.”
Buyers found it ugly and overpriced. The sticker price ran from $2,500 to $3,800; steep money, especially when more attractive cars were available for less.
Timing made everything worse. The Edsel hit showrooms just as a national recession began. Ford tried to make it work for two years before finally pulling the plug.
Lesson learned: Car buyers rejected both the design and the price, Wiener says. Far more thorough market research before launch could have saved Ford a great deal of trouble.
6. The Zeppelin (launched 1900)
In the 1920s and 1930s, zeppelins were the glamorous way to cross the Atlantic. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin’s company built enormous airships with luxurious cabins, and they became a symbol of the future of travel.
There was one catastrophic flaw. The designers filled these giant balloons with explosive hydrogen gas.
Accidents became common over the years. But the moment that ended it all came on May 6, 1937, when the Hindenburg caught fire as it was being moored in New Jersey after arriving from Germany. Thirty-six people died. The era of the zeppelin ended in a single moment.
Today, balloon-like airships still fly, but they use non-flammable helium.
Lesson learned: “How did engineers and scientists clever enough to design such a remarkable airship fail to understand how dangerous it was to use explosive hydrogen gas?” Wiener asks. The answer, he suggests, is that they simply did not do the safety science first.
7. Evel Knievel’s Rocket (1974)
If you watched television in September 1974, you probably remember the buildup. Daredevil Evel Knievel was going to jump the Snake River Canyon in a steam-powered rocket called the Skycycle X-2, built by designer Robert Truax.
Knievel had originally wanted to attempt the stunt over the Grand Canyon, but the National Park Service said no.
On September 8, 1974, the launch went badly wrong. The parachute deployed too early, robbing the rocket of its thrust. Knievel drifted down to the canyon floor, escaping with a broken nose and, as Wiener puts it, a “bruised reputation.”
Lesson learned: Knievel’s real skill was on a motorcycle, Wiener says, within limits he could control. “Branching out into rocket science was clearly beyond him. He lacked the technical knowledge to design such a craft properly and did not undertake the kind of testing and adjustments that real rocket science requires.”
And the Biggest Flop of All?
When Wiener was asked to name the single biggest product failure in history, he said the answer depends on how you measure failure, by financial loss or by human cost.
By the human measure, he points to thalidomide. The drug was widely prescribed to pregnant women in the late 1950s and early 1960s to treat nausea. Within a few years, it became clear that thalidomide caused severe congenital disabilities in thousands of children. The damage was permanent.
“The damage was permanent and caused untold heartbreak to countless families,” Wiener says.
In the aftermath, international regulatory agencies developed systematic toxicity testing that changed how drugs are approved, a lasting and important lesson paid for at a terrible price.