Sammy No Filter 🦅

In 1888, Thomas Edison’s company made a talking doll that played nursery rhymes from a tiny recording cylinder inside its body. The experiment was so fragile that many dolls were returned, and only one recording from the original experimental stage survives.

This 18th-century walking stick is actually a musical instrument. Its upper section is a flute, while its lower section can be played as an oboe—with the reed concealed beneath the handle.

A single American town once supplied nearly 40% of the world’s pearl buttons. In the early 1900s, Muscatine, Iowa, turned freshwater mussel shells into millions of buttons for clothing manufacturers.

Some traditional Mexican charangos have backs made from armadillo shell. This late-19th-century instrument at the Metropolitan Museum combines that shell with the familiar features of a Spanish guitar.

The first successful experiment in photocopying used a glass slide. In 1938, Chester Carlson made an image using the process that became xerography—more than 20 years before the first commercial Xerox copier appeared.

The first known submarine canyon was discovered without anyone going underwater. In 1857, surveyors mapping Monterey Bay, California, noticed an enormous underwater valley through measurements taken from a ship.

During the Napoleonic Wars, a French prisoner of war in England created a counterfeit £2 banknote entirely by hand. The Bank of England preserves the remarkable forgery, which shows how counterfeiting did not always require a printing press.

A musical instrument in New York’s Metropolitan Museum is made partly from a human skull. The 19th-century Central African lyre also contains antelope horn, animal skin, gut and hair—but its precise cultural origin remains unknown.

In the 1930s, American ocean surveyors used TNT explosions to help map underwater canyons. They timed how long the sound took to travel through seawater and return to a listening device, using the measurements to calculate distances.

Imagine a giant wooden wheel turning in a river, lifting water without an engine. Iraq’s traditional Al-Naoor does exactly that: 24 clay jugs attached to its rim scoop up Euphrates water and empty it into irrigation channels as the current turns the wheel.

Costa Rica’s traditional ox carts once used spokeless wheels—a clever design combining an Aztec-style solid disc with Spanish wheel technology. The wheels were suited to muddy routes, and each cart could produce its own distinctive chime as it moved.

In 1874, an inventor patented a ship designed to save passengers by letting its upper decks float away if the main hull sank. The decks were meant to separate from the sinking vessel and carry people to the surface.

The Bank of England once spent eight years developing a beautiful new banknote series. The designs were approved and printing plates prepared, but the notes were never issued because the Bank decided there was no longer a need for them.

The laboratory flask known as the Florence flask got its name from Italian merchants. Florentine traders shipped wine and oil in glass containers of that shape, and English instrument makers later reused the containers as laboratory equipment.

NASA once commissioned a special shaver for Apollo astronauts. It needed no batteries or electrical outlet, and it came with a collection bag to stop tiny shaving particles from floating around inside the spacecraft. It was designed for the missions but never flown.

In 1866, an American dentist Mahlon Loomis demonstrated a form of wireless communication using two kites. A meter connected to one kite caused another instrument to move—an experiment the Library of Congress identifies as the first known instance of wireless aerial communication.

A historical museum archive records a hollow glass walking stick filled with coloured sweets. It was described as a charm against witches: the belief was that a witch would become distracted counting the sweets until sunrise.

An 1868 invention combined four everyday functions in one device: a clothes-iron heater, a nurse’s lamp, a foot warmer and a small travelling cooking stove. Its inventor, Eleazer Small, even patented the unusual combination.

In 1841, a physician named John I. Howe patented a machine that automated pin-making. One machine could produce 24,000 pins in an 11-hour workday.

The flat-bottomed paper grocery bag owes part of its history to a woman inventor. In 1879, Margaret Knight patented a machine that folded and pasted these bags—a design the Smithsonian says is still used in their manufacture today.