Stacker has chronicled social, scientific, and business inventions that changed America over hundreds of years.

Most people have had an idea they never acted on. Brian Fried, known nationwide as The Inventor Coach, built a free AI platform to make sure that never has to happen again.

Photographs by Jo Whaley for TIME; Inventions from left: On Cloudboom Strike LightSpray, Medical Microinstruments Symani ...

Throughout history, humanity has displayed a remarkable talent for getting things spectacularly wrong when it comes to innovation. We’ve dismissed world-changing inventions as “useless toys,” invested ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The Dynasphere, an electronically gas-driven monowheel vehicle, being tested on Brean Sands by its inventor, John Archibald Purves ...

OCT is a noninvasive technique used to produce detailed images of complicated biological tissues such as the retina and the ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Per the USPTO, Americans were "benefitting from a post-World War II economic boom" in the 1960s and a workforce that "grew by ...

From the electric tricycle to parachute coat, these are some of the most poorly received devices developed around the globe.

But despite the countless numbers of interesting, useful, and even groundbreaking inventions on the market, many other bizarre creations in history barely made it beyond their initial prototypes.