Crotchless Beekeeper Suits And Cement Homes- Horrible Inventions By History’s Most Famous Inventors

Some of the greatest minds we have ever known came up with some downright terrible ideas

Humanity has been blessed with brilliant minds who have improved our ability to live and enjoy our surroundings with their amazing inventions. Some of these inventors have gone on to become historically famous. While their contributions were largely positive, not every idea they had was a home run. Consider these horrible ideas for inventions by two great inventors that crashed and burned, and in some cases were downright laughable.

During his lifetime (1847–1931), Edison obtained an amazing 1,093 patents. Among his innovations were early versions of light bulbs (although he did not invent the light bulb), the phonograph, movie cameras and alkaline storage batteries. Many of the things he pioneered are still in wide use today. However, not everything he came up with resonated with people.

One of the most head-scratching inventions that came from the mind of Edison was his concrete homes.Having previously founded a concrete company, and hoping to come up with a way to produce affordable houses, the inventor patented this idea in 1917. He explained:

“The object of my invention is to construct a building of a cement mixture by a single molding operation, all its parts, including the sides, roofs, partitions, bath tubs, floors, etc., being formed of an integral mass of a cement mixture.”

Absent traditional building materials, these homes were an affordable $1,200 each and could be safely called antithetical to such detriments as insects, catastrophic messes and fire destruction. He hoped that this would level the playing field and allow those in less desirable situations to move into houses that were modern and efficient. Edison believed in his idea so much that he even gave his patented plans to qualified builders free of charge.

Unfortunately, concrete houses never caught on. Not only were they complicated and expensive for builders to buy the necessary materials to get started, they just weren’t very attractive or comfortable, and drew tepid interest at best. Although a few were built in New Jersey and Indiana (that still stand), the invention never went past this exploratory stage. The lack of people flocking to explore affordable homes like this quickly proved to be its death knell.

Another great inventor with a horrible miss was Benjamin Franklin. Born in Boston in 1706, he moved to Philadelphia as a young man. He built his reputation with his innovations and rapier wit with the pen and printing [ress, which eventually made him into a well-known public figure. During his life, he served as the Postmaster General for British America, the first American Postmaster General, Minister to France and Sweden, and Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly.

His voracious mind was always moving, and as a consequence, he often put his thoughts to practice, inventing bifocal glasses, lightning rods, a urinary catheter, a stove and swimming fins among other things. It was all works of necessity and curiosity, as he never sought patents for his creations.

Easily the weirdest of Franklin’s inventions was a crotchless beekeeper suit. He became obsessed with keeping bees, believing that they were an essential part of living a subsistent life. Deciding to build the ultimate beekeeper suit, he designed it with his own needs in mind. The get up included a mesh face mask and gloves, but being at the stage of his life where he had to urinate frequently, he left the area around the crotch open, to help make things easier to access when he needed to take a leak.

Unsurprisingly, what was convenient to Franklin didn’t resonate with others, who were a bit more leery about the potential for their precious assets feeling the sting. Unlike some of his other ideas, this one quickly fell off the radar.