Tales of the origins of now-ubiquitous innovations?

May 2, 2006 9:38 AM

I'd love some help/direction/inspiration finding stories and quotes about inventions and technologies that are now ubiquitous, but were once considered to be unnecessary or impractical.

I'm thinking along the lines of the Bill Gates-attributed "640k ought to be enough for anybody", or Henry Ford's quip that customers could have their car in any color they want, as long as it's black.

What I'm looking for are examples that illustrate how a new idea was once considered to be either a luxury, or to have no practical application in everyday life, but eventually came to be a household word--automobiles, washing machines, the television, etc. Specific examples would be most helpful, or general commentary on a certain area of technology or day-to-day life.

I'm already sifting through the various quote repositories, but would love any other sources, online or otherwise, that you can point me toward.

posted by padraigin to society & culture (18 comments total)

The story goes that Chester Carlson took his idea for to Kodak and IBM and was told it was impractical to develop. Not long after, Xerox was born.

And by the way, I know everyone likes to make fun of Bill Gates, but 640K quote is bogus. That limit was imposed by the hardware designers of the IBM PC.
posted by iconjack at 9:52 AM on May 2, 2006

I do know that quote is fake, that's why I said "attributed"--but it's in the spirit of what I'm looking for.
posted by padraigin at 9:55 AM on May 2, 2006

I'd look into the history of the post-it note (sorry, no links for you). The adhesive was considered rather "useless" for a long time because who wants to only sort of stick something, and then once the product was finally developed 3M took a long time doing free samples and otherwise "training" buyers how to use the product.
posted by anastasiav at 9:59 AM on May 2, 2006

There is a famous quote by IBM chairman Tom Watson in Popular Mechanics in 1949:
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
I don't know for sure that's it's valid though.
posted by iconjack at 10:02 AM on May 2, 2006

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
posted by iconjack at 10:03 AM on May 2, 2006

The laser was considered a solution looking for a problem (link may be down temporarily) when it was first developed in the 1960's.
posted by lhauser at 10:07 AM on May 2, 2006

The best example that comes to mind is the book or even more fundamentally, paper. Once thought to be a luxury item only needed for scholars, paper was a catalyst for explosive technological and cultural advancement during the renaissance. Before the invention of the printing press, writing, reproducing and distributing paper products was a laborious process. Now it's taken for granted (so much so that it's hard to consider that it even is technology). From wikipedia According to this theory, Chinese culture was less developed than the West in ancient times because bamboo, while abundant, was a clumsier writing material than papyrus; Chinese culture advanced during the Han Dynasty and preceding centuries due to the invention of paper; and Europe advanced during the Renaissance due to the introduction of paper and the printing press.

I think that some time in the near future, the internet will be looked upon as a similar catalyst.
posted by |n$eCur3 at 10:10 AM on May 2, 2006

It's not exactly a household staple, but the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) which won Kary Mullis the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1993 and is now is a molecular biology and crime lab workhorse was pretty impractical at the time of it's invention.

It took the discovery of enzymes from organisms discovered in hot springs to make it practical to run the multiple cycles of heating to near boiling and then down again required to make multiple copies of targeted DNA fragments. Previously, people had to add new enzyme after each heating and cooling cycle because the heating would inactivate it. Now they just mix everything up in a small tube or a series of tiny wells, put it in a pellitier thermocycler and set the thing running.
posted by Good Brain at 10:24 AM on May 2, 2006

American Heritage's magazine Invention and Technology is an excellent resource for stories about the history of invention.

What's great is that they have posted, online, all issues of their magazine since 1985, and you can read the full text of all 'feature' articles from each issue.

It's a great resouce, and an extremely interesting magazine that I would recommend highly to anyone interested in the history of invention and technology.
posted by extrabox at 10:45 AM on May 2, 2006

I don't know that anyone ever disputed the usefulness of wheels on luggage, but I think it's amazing that prior to 1989, wheels on suitcases were the exception. (I recall people trying to maneuver big hard-sided suitcases by a flimsy leather strap attached to the side.) Now they're on everything, including duffle bags and backpacks.
posted by hsoltz at 11:45 AM on May 2, 2006

James Burke's Connections (tv series and books) might have some of what you are looking for. He also did The Day the Universe Changed (tv series and book as well).

I particularly liked some of the stuff that came out of trying to figure out what to do with a given industry's waste products. My memory is hazy but there's something in there about coal tar and aniline dyes, I think.
posted by beth at 11:55 AM on May 2, 2006

In 1899, the Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office Charles H. Duell suggested shutting the office down because "Everything that can be invented has been invented." Not sure if it's apocryphal - this site seems to think so. I still like it.
posted by selfmedicating at 12:15 PM on May 2, 2006

Was there anything about radiation when it was first discovered? I'm also having flashbacks to A Brief History of Nearly Everything, and feel like there were some chemistry examples in there...don't have the book anymore, though...
posted by inigo2 at 12:20 PM on May 2, 2006

Ignaz Semmelweiss was ridiculed and hounded for his notion that a doctor ought to wash his hands between patients.
posted by goofyfoot at 12:51 PM on May 2, 2006 [1 favorite]

I get the feeling that a lot of these once-rare, now-ubiquitous technologies "trickle down" from work to home use. Mobile phones for instance. People get used to being able to make calls or be available for work reasons, and of course they use it for personal stuff too. What should they do if they move jobs and the new job doesn't give them a mobile? Same with internet access which people got used to at universities, back in the day, and then went cold turkey when they graduated.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 1:35 PM on May 2, 2006

inigo2: x-rays were used by doctors to look at broken bones pretty much immediately after they were discovered.
posted by atrazine at 3:22 PM on May 2, 2006

These calculator ads might be interesting to you. After ads for tons of big, expensive ("All this for $995.") business machines, the last one is an ad aimed at home life.
posted by pracowity at 5:14 PM on May 2, 2006

Supposedly, a student in a Yale University economics class wrote a paper on a hub-and-spoke system for delivering packages quickly. He was awarded a C.

After graduating, he founded a company that would become FedEx.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 9:47 PM on May 2, 2006