weird inventions

Now, wearing grillz is about more than a fashion statement. You can use it as an MP3 player, using bone conduction to play your block rockin’ beats through your teeth. Because why not.

If you have a smartphone, odds are you’ve experienced those few seconds of horror after your precious (and pricey) gadget slips out of your hands. You flail and grab, arms akimbo, in a vain attempt to save your phone from certain destruction — or at least certain scratching. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

Not content to let his phone suffer, and apparently not a fan of cases, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had another idea: An autonomous airbag or propulsion system that can safeguard a phone.

Every month for the past 138 years, we've showcased inventions and concepts for mechanisms aimed at improving life. Sometimes this meant curing cancer, other times it meant having fun, and on rare (and scary) occasions, it meant building something because you could.

For every airplane, computer or chemical weapon appearing in our archives, there are a ton of other inventions that are, to put it bluntly, rather pointless. At best, they're well-intentioned but a little impractical. Let's take a look, shall we?