It Might Have Been!
The history of invention is full of brilliant, yet crazy ideas. Can you imagine what life might be like today if Thomas Edison had developed his idea of anti-gravity underwear, or if Alexander Bell had persisted in trying to invent a talking fire alarm rather than a telephone? Inventions inspire people to think of the future and its possibilities, but trying to predict the success of inventions and how people will react to them has never been easy. The first motor cars had to travel through towns at walking pace behind a man carrying a red flag because they frightened people and horses. People thought that motor cars would never replace the horse and buggy. In the 1950s, the president of IBM predicted that, at most, no more than one computer per country would ever be built! The computer endured, but other inventions had a short life. This collection from the past 200 years shows you just what might have been.