“Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.” – Mark Twain
Introduction
What exactly is White Elephant Technology?
Simply put, any unusual invention past or present that fails to find a market despite its innovative nature qualifies as White Elephant Technology, or WETech for short.
You’re already familiar with the usual suspects such as flying cars and jet packs, but the majority of inventions covered in this book are ones most people have never heard of. From jeeps that fly to tanks that shouldn’t; from a wave-powered boat that takes forever to reach its destination to a jet-powered train that shook itself apart, White Elephant Technology showcases its inventor’s talent for inventing something nobody asked for. Importantly, none of these inventions are speculative. Each one was built, field-tested, and worked more or less as planned except in the case when it inadvertently killed its inventor.
So, why is the study of WETech inventions important?
It’s not always easy to understand why one invention succeeds and another fails. Luck, timing, and market conditions have as much to do with it as functionality. Success for even the cleverest inventor sometimes comes down to a roll of the dice.
When Dean Kamen introduced the Segway in 2001, it was predicted his invention would so revolutionize personal transportation as to become ubiquitous. Kamen even claimed his invention would be the fastest in history to reach $1 billion in sales. And yet, the Razor, a foot-powered scooter introduced the year before for $29.99, sold 50 million units while the Segway sold only 140,000. Despite tremendous hype and financial backing, the Segway was a failure.
Although we’re told there’s more to learn from failure than success, there’s no denying our culture prizes success. Yet this might change if more people realized just how often commercial endeavors fail.
For example:
Approximately, 80% of all books, movies, popular music, and video games fail to turn a profit.
85% of all new grocery products are pulled from supermarket shelves within a year of introduction.
And 90% of all patented inventions never earn a dime.
In other words, failure is the rule, not the exception.
And high failure rates aren’t confined just to business. Take sports, for example. A baseball batting average of .300 is considered excellent even though it means a batter fails to hit the ball every seven out of ten times at bat.
Put simply, failure is a significant part of life. That’s why the First Rule of Failure states: The majority of commercial endeavors are UNLIKELY to succeed. This alone makes WETech inventions worthy of study.
High failure rates don’t mean we should stop striving, however. After all, where would we be if Columbus hadn’t failed at finding a better trade route to India, or we’d given up on reaching the moon after the Apollo 1 fire? The world would be a lesser place. Simply put, we’re better off for trying even when we fail.
Obviously, failure has a lot to teach us. What’s often overlooked, however, is the tremendous amount of talent, perseverance, and sheer out-of-the-box thinking go into creating something even when it fails. That’s why the ingredients necessary for inventing something new (including grit, ingenuity and optimism) are the same ingredients for success.
Perhaps this is why research into failure is finally catching on. Once confined to academia, medicine, and aviation, the study of failure now generates international conferences as well as books, magazines, newspaper articles and research studies. There’s even a Museum of Failure that tours the world. Still, no one has ever undertaken a survey of failed inventions despite history being littered with them. Until now.
White Elephant Technology is written in a light-hearted, easy-to-understand manner. Each entry in the book’s ten, thematically-linked chapters explain who the inventor was, how their invention worked, why it failed, and what if anything we can learn from their mistakes. Numerous photographs, diagrams, and illustrations are included depicting what the invention (and in some cases, the inventor) looked like. Naturally, humor is inevitable, but the overall take is respectful.
I’ve specialized in reporting on WETech inventions for twenty years. I’ve written about them for the New York Times Science section, Popular Science, and Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine among other publications. I’ve even written two non-fiction books and worked on two documentaries with WETech inventions at their core.
Although the technical aspect of many of these inventions is fascinating, what really drew my attention was the heroic investment every inventor makes in their invention even when it fails. In other words, the story behind the invention is as important as the invention itself. Since many inventions represent years of hard work, financial sacrifice, and fierce determination on the part of the inventor White Elephant Technology is one of the purest expressions of the human condition. No wonder so many inventors refuse to give up.
Hopefully, 50 WETech Inventions captures all the ambition, pitfalls, and heartbreak that go into inventing. At the very least, it will cause you to shake your head in wonder while asking the question, “What in the world were they thinking?” Such dedication on the part of an inventor may seem crazy when success remains elusive, but as an Apple computer commercial once noted, “It’s the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world that do.”
Where would we be without them?
Click here to view the Table of Contents of White Elephant Technology.