While people have invented some brilliant things over the decades—commercial airplanes, bounce houses, smartphones—there have been an equal number of questionable creations that history has quietly swept under the rug. From soup-cooling spoons to clap-activated switches for the bedroom lights, here are 17 strange inventions from the past century that made us wonder: did anyone actually need these?
#1: Casio Calculator Lighter (1979)
If you were a rebel in the 80s, you might have spotted a friend with this oddity. While smoking was commonplace then, carrying a calculator that doubled as a lighter certainly wasn’t. The question “Who would ever use that?” answers itself: almost no one. The Casio Calculator Lighter fizzled out before it could ever ignite the market (pun intended). Today, your smartphone handles everything from advanced mathematics to summoning transportation, but it still can’t light a cigarette for you. Maybe some technological limitations are for the best.
