5 absurd objects that tried to change the future

Between technical utopia and an obsession with control, these five inventions, each designed to improve everyday life, reveal the most unsettling – and oddly fascinating – side of modern design.

Once upon a time, between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, the world was ruled less by common sense and more by ingenuity. It was an era when technology was used to tame bodies, suppress desires, perfect posture, and standardize beauty down to the last millimeter. With the same seriousness we now reserve for programming spacecraft, people once designed machines to mass-smoke cigarettes, broadcast radio signals from bras, or prevent autoeroticism with strategically placed metal spikes. Viewed today, side by side, these bizarre yet historically documented and patented devices portray a kind of grotesque bestiary: a surreal atlas of absurdities where the stubborn optimism of modernity takes physical shape. Created to heal, help, and enhance life, they instead reveal – by contrast – the fragility, humor, and sometimes disturbing undercurrents of the progress-driven mindset. 

Tanya Wexler, Hysteria, 2011

We’ve selected five emblematic examples: a medical vibrator, a radio hat, a baby cage, a thermal face mask, and an amphibious bicycle. Each one tells the story of a world that believed in technology as salvation, design as discipline, and the human body as a machine to be trained. They’re not just relics of ridicule, but rather polished mirrors reflecting a certain blind faith in functionality.

1. The Victorian electromechanical vibrator or how hysteria was treated with piston-powered therapy (1880–1920)

In the heart of Victorian England – among lace aprons, heavy carpets, and repressed neuroses – one of the most controversial (and misunderstood) inventions in medical technology history came to life: the electromechanical vibrator. Built with the same austere seriousness as a drill press, this device was intended for a use that today we’d hardly call neutral: the treatment of female hysteria. 

Vintage A.C. Gilbert manual massager

In the dominant medical thinking of the 19th century, hysteria wasn’t seen as a psychiatric disorder but as an “accumulation of fluids” – a condition often treated by doctors through pelvic massage. With the advent of the electric motor, treatment could be mechanized. And so emerged a generation of loud, oscillating devices, neatly classified as medical instruments. Was it truly used to treat women’s hysteria? Yes and no. British physician Joseph Mortimer Granville, its inventor, marketed it as a remedy for muscle pain and even, with a kind of quaint optimism, for deafness. The catch-all diagnosis of “hysteria” (a vague, deeply misogynistic label for virtually any female discomfort) was simply among its many supposed applications.

Gilbert Vitalator vintage vibrator, 1955. Photo from Ebay

In the United States, the electric vibrator quickly became the fifth most common household appliance, ranking just behind the iron and ahead of the vacuum cleaner (Rachel Maines, 1999). Advertisements touted its benefits for “rejuvenation” and “muscle stimulation,” carefully avoiding any mention of orgasm.

Its design mimicked industrial tools: a cylindrical body, pistol-style grip, and a variety of interchangeable attachments. Some resembled wartime hair dryers. The sound was deafening. The effect, evidently, was effective. Withdrawn from the market in the 1920s as social discomfort grew, these devices now reside in medical museums as artifacts of the medicalization of female desire. They’re no laughing matter; they’re sobering evidence of how the female body was long treated as a mystery to be “corrected.”

2. Radio Hat: when technology gets into your head – USA, 1949

In 1949, the first real experiment in wearable technology hit the market: the Radio Hat, a headpiece with a built-in radio designed to listen to music wherever you went. As futuristic as it was clunky, it made waves in magazines like Life and Popular Science. The “Man-from-Mars Radio Hat,” a mix of brilliance and absurdity, was the brainchild of Victor Hoeflich, who had the idea to embed a vacuum-tube radio inside a colorful hat. The result? A futuristic creation, available in eight eye-popping colors (including chartreuse, flamingo pink, and lipstick red), capable of picking up AM signals within a 20-mile (32 km) range. The hat was a rigid shell, topped with telescopic antennas, equipped with a tuning knob, and powered by a battery pack tucked behind the neck: an object somewhere between pop science fiction and surrealist gadgetry. 

Cover of the June 1949 issue of Radio-Electronics showing the Man-from-Mars Radio Hat, worn by then 15-year-old Hope Lange. © Radio-Electronics staff, Avery Slack photographer

At first, it was a media sensation. Photos of teenagers donning the Radio Hat flooded newspapers, tech journals, and even fashion magazines (Popular Mechanics, Life, Newsweek). The most iconic image? A 15-year-old Hope Lange on the cover of Life, proudly sporting a blazing red hat: a post-war queen of the ether. The radio technology was on full display: the loop antenna stood out like a primitive satellite dish, while glowing vacuum tubes shone in bright light. This wasn’t a device to be disguised; it was meant to be shown off. However, production stopped within months. The hat only picked up one station, it was prone to malfunction, and it was heavy and awkward to wear.

Photo from the public presentation of “Man from Mars, Radio Hat,” designed by Victor Hoeflich, 1949

Today, the Radio Hat feels like a relic of the modernist dream. Long before AirPods or smartwatches with Alexa, there was this: a talking hat. But the dream of portable music and freedom of listening while on the move would be reached only a few years later with the invention of the transistor radio in the 1950s.

These inventions speak volumes about the fear of the body, obsession with control, and a fetish for progress. But they also reveal the beautiful foolishness with which humanity, time and again, tries to reinvent the world.

3. The Window Baby Cage: fresh air – with a side of vertigo – London, 1922–1950

It wasn’t a Calder sculpture or a Dadaist installation, the “baby cage” was a health and parenting device suspended outside a window, like a flower box, but instead of geraniums you’d put…a baby. The idea took root in the early 20th century, driven by two prevailing concerns of the time: the fear of tuberculosis and the belief in the healing power of fresh air. Cooped within the walls of apartments in working-class city neighborhoods, often lacking balconies or gardens, children needed access to fresh air and sunlight. This led to the invention of the “health cage”: a metal wire-mesh box structure bolted to the windowsill, where infants could nap, breathe clean air, and soak up the sun – suspended in midair in the city.


The practice gained notoriety (and caused scandal) thanks to a young Eleanor Roosevelt. Long before becoming First Lady, she installed one of these cages outside her New York City apartment for her daughter Anna. Shocked neighbors threatened to report her for child cruelty. Years later, she admitted her surprise: she thought she was being a forward-thinking mother. Perfected and patented by Emma Read in 1922, the baby cage soon became a common sight in London. By the 1930s, organizations like the Chelsea Baby Club were handing them out to families without access to outdoor space. The Royal Institute of British Architects even recommended the balcon pour bébé as a standard feature in middle-class homes. But then came the bombs, the war, and later, the rise of motor traffic, which gradually (and thankfully) pushed this peculiar yet dangerous solution into obsolescence.

Emma Read's patent for a “portable cage for children.” Image by Inventor Emma Read from Wikimedia Commons

Today, the sight of a newborn dangling in a metal basket above a busy street provokes immediate, visceral anxiety. It’s a striking example of well-meaning but disturbing design: prioritizing hygiene and exposure to fresh air over safety, with an alarming degree of trust in both structural integrity and urban tranquility. Such a device would be unthinkable today, not just due to physical safety concerns, but because our views on childhood, parenting, and domestic life have fundamentally shifted. If fresh air was once seen as salvation, today it’s protection – perhaps even overprotection – that reigns supreme.

4. Electric Heat Beauty Mask: a new face – and an extra burn – 1930s

In the 1930s, the cult of beauty collided with the rise of domestic electrical appliances. In beauty salons and middle-class living rooms, the heat beauty mask started to appear: a rigid facial shell wired with exposed heating coils, designed to boost circulation and smooth wrinkles, by quite literally melting your skin away.

The Facial Toning Mask Kit by Rejuvenique. Photo from X

The mask was marketed as a non-surgical facelift, but the risks were all too real: burns, headaches, dry eyes. Some models were even sold for at-home use, complete with user manuals that now read more like battlefield instructions than beauty guides. But this wasn’t just about aesthetics; it was about control. The face became a surface to be disciplined through electricity and reshaped through thermotherapy.

Rejuvenique RJV10KIT Face Toning Mask Kit from Ebay

5. Cyclomer, the amphibious cycle: cycling on water like it was solid ground – France, 1932

In 1932, French inventor Charles Mochet unveiled the Cyclomer: an amphibious cycle equipped with inflatable side floats, designed to cross rivers and lakes without ever taking your feet off the pedals. Launched in France as a symbol of functionalist utopia, the Cyclomer merged a bicycle and a boat in one single vehicle. The design was visionary. It featured three wheels with buoyant disc-like tires, a rigid frame, and a (theoretically) stable handling. Magazines of that time praised its daring design. But in practice, the Cyclomer was a disaster. It was exhausting to pedal, unstable in the water, and painfully slow. A single wave could tip it over. The concept never made it past the prototype phase, and today, it stands as a symbol of modernism’s capacity for designing the impossible. Cycling on water? Technically possible, just not for very long.

Amphibious bike 'Cyclomer', Paris, 1932. © Nationaal Archief - Flickr: Amfibiefiets / Amphibious bicycle from Wikimedia Commons

There’s always a kind of logic behind absurdity, and often, that’s what makes it truly unsettling. These inventions speak volumes about the fear of the body, obsession with control, and a fetish for progress. But they also reveal the beautiful foolishness with which humanity, time and again, tries to reinvent the world. If today they make us laugh, cringe, or marvel, it’s only because we’ve gained the distance to see them clearly for what they were: bad ideas, technological perversions, moral hygiene hallucinations. Yet every one of them came with its own user manual.