Can you imagine someone felt that the light bulb was neither practical nor scientific?
In today’s time and age, marketing is everything. Companies market their innovative product in such a fascinating way that you have no choice but to pay attention to them. But long before marketing gimmicks surrounded us, new groundbreaking innovations were often ridiculed. The initial reaction to most of these revolutionary inventions was not so welcoming. Let’s have a look at some of the earliest reactions to these inventions.
Light Bulb.
Can we imagine our lives without light bulbs? We would be still living in the dark with candles and lanterns if it wasn’t for Thomas Edison. But when he first developed the first light bulb, the reactions were not quite favourable. A committee of British Parliamentarian snubbed the invention and remarked that the invention was good enough for Transatlantic people; it is not for practical and scientific people like them. Some people even went to lengths to call the light bulb a sham or a fairy tale.
Television.
Research in the year 2013 remarked that almost two billion people worldwide have one television set in their houses. But this number is a far cry from the fact that television was brushed off by people when it first made its appearance. When John Logie Baird gave the first demonstration of television in the year 1925, people laughed at it and called it a development that is a wastage of money and resources. Even after many years, people were still not convinced by the power of television. In the year 1946, a film producer famously remarked that people would get bored of looking at the plywood box.
Cars.
In year 1902, the world-famous New York Timesrebuffed the idea of the automobile and termed the invention as impractical. They argued that cars would not be able to compete with bikes (cycles) in anyway. The main reason for their negative reaction was people believed that cars would never be affordable.
Vaccines.
With the world facing hell due to the Covid pandemic, vaccines are life-savers. But vaccines were not such a crowd-puller in the 17th century. Like we have anti-vaxxers today, in those times, the term was anti-vaccinationists. These anti-vaccinationists fought foot to nail for the eradication of vaccines. So much so, in the year 1870, there was a petition in the supreme court as well as local courts to eliminate vaccines.
So, let’s take a moment to thank these fearless inventors, who didn’t pay heed to criticism and carved their own niche.
