7 unsuccessful World's Fair inventions that predicted future technology

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Associated Press

World's Fairs used to be Olympic-scale events. They were pageants dedicated to the promises of technology — much like today's Consumer Electronics Expo, but with more bowler hats.

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Like many of the products shown at CES each year, a lot of the inventions were so cutting-edge at the time that they were either too expensive or too weird for audiences. Others were unwieldy or unrefined in their current states, and had to be improved before they could be released to the public.

Though most of the inventions below proved unsuccessful, they were early predecessors of technologies we now use all the time.

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The fax machine (Great Exhibition, 1851)

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Wikimedia Commons

The concept of a fax machine came as early as 1843 when Scottish inventor Alexander Bain had an idea for a chemical telegraph. 

Rival inventor Nathaniel Bakewell was the first to successfully get a machine to send messages and drawings over telegraph lines. He beat Bain to the first World's Fair in London in 1851, then called the Great Exhibition.

An improved version of a facsimile, or "fax" machine reappeared at New York's 1939 World's Fair, where fair goers did not realize the idea was nearly 100 years old.

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AT&T's picturephone (New York World's Fair, 1964)

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AT&T Archives and History Center

This early videoconferencing device was invented by Bell Labs. According to AT&T's Archives and History Center, Bell projected that there would be 100,000 of them made by 1975.

Here's the catch: the service was hideously expensive. The first three picturephones, which were in Chicago, New York City, DC, hosted 3-minute calls that cost between $18 and $27 ($139 to $208 in 2016 prices).

Too advanced for its time, the service folded in the late 1970s, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

We now call this invention FaceTime.

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General Motors' autonomous car (New York World's Fair, 1964)

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Seattle Municipal Archives/Flickr

In 1964, General Motors presented the Firebird IV at the New York World's Fair (pictured above is the Firebird III, at Seattle's Expo in 1962). The car was nonfunctional, but its inventors claimed it was a prototype vehicle for automated highways.

Hemmings Motor News explains that the car would be able to drive itself through a pre-programmed "automated highway interface," similar to what Tesla's autopilot features do today. After getting off the highway, the driver would be prompted to resume manual driving.

But the company never got beyond the prototype, and Hemmings reports the car was scrapped in the early 1980s. 

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Zippers (Chicago World's Fair, 1893)

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US Patent Office

Before zippers got their name in 1923, they were referred to as "clasp lockers," which doesn't quite have the same ring. 

In 1891, inventor Whitcomb Judson started marketing the clasp locker, and he teamed up with salesman Lewis Walker to debut the Universal Fastener Company at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. 

It wasn't until years later that the company hired Gideon Sundback, an electrical engineer, to improve the clasp's design. In 1913, Sundback filed a patent for what we now know as the zipper, dubbing it the "separable fastener."

Not quite "zipper," but close enough.

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Moving walkways (Chicago World's Fair, 1893)

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Wikimedia Commons

The moving walkways we now use in airports got their start at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. Charging 10 cents a ride, the Columbian Moving Company gave spectators a ride on a 3,500-foot stretch of pier.

The walkway was unfortunately destroyed in a fire the following year, according to Mental Floss. The world had to wait about 50 more years — until 1954 — to use the world's first commercially available moving walkway.

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A floating city (Okinawa Ocean Expo, 1975)

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Wikimedia Commons

Long before tech billionaire Peter Thiel showed interest in the idea of a floating city, Japanese architects were drafting plans for oceanic airports. 

In 1975, the Japanese city of Okinawa held the world's first International Ocean Exhibition (a marine-specific take on the World's Fair) to draw attention to the potential urbanization of the seas.

In an article in Marine Structures, University of Tokyo professor Hideyuki Suzuki described the Aquapolis pictured above as a "large semi-submersible unit of a floating city," a prototype of a structure humans could live on if they ever colonized the oceans.

YouTuber Mick McClary visited the site of the Aquapolis in 1989 but says the structure was closed in 1993, then scrapped in 2000.

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Jetpacks (New York World's Fair, 1964)

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Associated Press

Jetpacks are an established sci-fi trope — even comic book covers featured them in the early 20th century. It wasn't until a working jetpack debuted at the 1964 New York World's Fair that the public actually saw how awesome they could be.

According to NASA's Langley Research Center, the jetpack above, called the Jet Belt, was invented by Bell Aerosystems. It was created during the Space Race, when aviation and aerospace companies were flush with funds.

Robert Courter, a pilot, demonstrated the belt about three times per day at the fair, and even flew it around the iconic globe-shaped Unisphere. According to Steve Lehto, author of "The Great American Jetpack," the Jet Belt was able to stay in the air for minutes, though the one Courter is test driving above lasted only 21 seconds. 

After the Fair, the device got a number of redesigns. Amusingly, Bell adapted the technology to make a hovering office chair. Rest assured that the first commercially available jetpacks will be way cooler than that.

Inventions
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