Inventions That Never Reached the World

Transcript

If this is true, then all modern technology is a lie. Does every great invention ever reach the world, or are some ideas suppressed forever? In 1951, the United States enacted the Invention Secrecy Act, [music] under which the government can classify any patent that is considered a threat to national security. Even today, thousands of inventions remain locked under secrecy orders. But the question isn't only about governments. In the 1920s, the Feebas cartel deliberately reduced the lifespan of light bulbs so consumers would be forced to buy them again and again.

This is where planned obsolescence was born. In the 1990s, General Motors electric car, the EV1, was removed from the roads and control over powerful battery patents shifted elsewhere. Similar claims appeared in medicine as well. Some inventors claimed to have cures for cancer, but on the test of science and evidence, most of these theories failed to hold up. And then there are those inventions that were either lost or claimed to break the laws of physics, cars that run on water, or impossible levels of data compression.

So what is the truth? Not every suppressed invention is a conspiracy, and not every revolutionary claim is real innovation. The real battle is between curiosity and evidence. What do you think? How many discoveries were truly suppressed? And how many were just myths?