Top 10 Inventors Who Regretted Their Inventions

Inventors across the globe have all impacted the world in some way with their many inventions. Some of them however, regret ever making their inventions or at least wish their creation was used differently.
The Top Ten
J. Robert Oppenheimer (Atomic Bomb) J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist who was professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is among those who are credited with being the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan... read more

Many people make the mistake of attributing the creation of the atomic bomb to Albert Einstein, but Einstein never worked on developing the deadly weapon. Instead, it was Oppenheimer who directed work on the atomic bomb during World War II.

He and many of the project staff were very upset about the bombing of Nagasaki, as they did not feel the second bomb was necessary from a military point of view. Oppenheimer later stated he felt like he had blood on his hands and began working with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to control the use of nuclear weapons.

Alfred Nobel (Dynamite) Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist. He held 355 different patents, dynamite being the most famous. He owned Bofors, which he redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a major manufacturer of cannon and other... read more

Alfred Nobel might be more famous for starting the Nobel Peace Prize, but that was because he wanted to redeem himself after he created dynamite in the 1860s. He created dynamite to help his family's mining business.

Of course, the army decided that if it could be used to obliterate rocks, it was good enough to obliterate enemies, which is exactly how dynamite was eventually used. In 1888, his brother Ludwig died, but the papers mistakenly reported that Alfred had died.

The obituary said, "The merchant of death is dead," and claimed that Nobel "became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before." Nobel was understandably shaken by that and felt remorse for inventing dynamite after that.

Mikhail Kalashnikov (AK-47)

Mikhail Kalashnikov invented the AK-47 in 1947. It is the most widely used assault rifle in the world and with good reason, as it is cheap and easy to produce as well as being a sturdy and lightweight weapon.

Before his death in 2014, Kalashnikov wrote several letters to the Russian Orthodox Church, which later became public. In one of them, he wrote: "I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle claimed people's lives, then can it be that I... a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?"

Philo Farnsworth (Television)

When Philo Farnsworth created the television, he wanted it to be used for learning. However, he died feeling people were instead wasting their lives being lazy and watching things that don't help them grow intellectually. He even forbade his son from watching television, telling him: "There's nothing worthwhile on it, and we're not going to watch it in this household, and I don't want it in your intellectual diet."

Wow, he must have really hated his creation if he didn't want his son watching TV.

Ethan Zuckerman (Pop-Up Ad)

Ethan Zuckerman apologized for his creation a few years ago, saying he only had good intentions. In the late '90s, Zuckerman worked for Tripod.com, a website that marketed content and services for college graduates.

At some point, the company wanted to find ways to make more money. They tried a few things and eventually found that advertising was their best source of revenue. In his apology, he said: "It was a way to associate an ad with a user's page without putting it directly on the page, which advertisers worried would imply an association between their brand and the page's content. I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I'm sorry. Our intentions were good."

Anna Jarvis (Mother's Day)

Anna Jarvis came up with Mother's Day because she loved her mother and felt that mothers weren't recognized and appreciated enough. The first Mother's Day was celebrated in 1908 at her church. She chose white carnations as a symbol of Mother's Day because it was her mother's favorite flower.

Her idea caught on, and in 1914, the second Sunday of May was legislated to be Mother's Day. As always, some people saw this as a way to make money. After around four years, card companies and chocolatiers got involved, and the price for white carnations went up.

Anna Jarvis hated that the nice day she created became a day for profit, and she regretted her creation all her life.

Robert Propst (Office Cubicle)

Robert Propst came up with the idea of the office cubicle in the 1960s. It was intended to give employees more freedom and privacy. Here is where it all went wrong: companies saw Propst's invention as a way to save money. By making them a little smaller, they could fit a few more people into the same space.

In interviews, he said: "The cubiclizing of people in modern corporations is monolithic insanity" and "The dark side of this is that not all organizations are intelligent and progressive. Lots are run by crass people who can take the same kind of equipment and create hellholes."

Kamran Loghman (Pepper Spray)

Pepper spray became a weapon in the 1980s when Kamran Loghman worked for the FBI. It was intended to be used as a non-lethal way to pacify someone at range who is threatening a police officer or other citizen.

After an incident at the University of California in 2011, Loghman wasn't pleased with how his creation was used by police officers on "docile protesters." He said to the New York Times: "I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents."

Victor Gruen (Shopping Mall)

The first mall in the U.S., known as Southdale Center Mall, was built in 1956 in Edina, Minnesota. Back when cities were smaller and more concentrated, everyone lived downtown, so everyone was close to all the shops.

As suburbs developed, it became harder for people living outside the city to buy the things they needed. Victor Gruen's solution was the shopping mall - an area where people could easily get all the things they needed, which would also have green spaces and art and overall feel more open.

The idea caught on quickly, but, as always, some people exploited the concept and removed everything that made the mall look nice, like the art and plants, in favor of, you guessed it, more stores, all in a single enclosed building. In 1978, Victor Gruen said: "I would like to take this opportunity to disclaim paternity once and for all. I refuse to pay alimony to those bastard developments. They destroyed our cities."

Dong Nguyen (Flappy Bird)

Honestly, with Nintendo's strict copyright policies and just wanting to be left alone, I can't blame Mr. Nguyen.

The Newcomers

? Peter L. Jensen (Loudspeaker)
? Robert Watson-Watt (Radar)
The Contenders
John Sylvan (K-Cup)

Guess who doesn't have a Keurig coffee maker in his home? That's right, the creator of the Keurig K-Cups himself! Sylvan said: "I feel bad sometimes that I ever did it," and that is because these cups are not only expensive, they aren't recyclable or biodegradable, so there are literally tons filling up landfills.

He said a few years ago: "It's like a cigarette for coffee, a single-serve delivery mechanism for an addictive substance."

Orville Wright (Airplane)

Orville and Wilbur Wright are famous for inventing and being the first to fly in a powered airplane. Unlike his brother, Orville Wright lived to see their invention used in both World War I and World War II.

When first giving airplanes to the US Army, the brothers imagined that they would be used for observation. After WWII, Orville Wright said that he and his brother had "dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth. But we were wrong."

Tim Berners-Lee (HTTP Forward Slashes) Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is known as the creator of the World Wide Web. However, there is a part of his work he regrets: the two slashes (//) next to the http address of every web page. They were included due to a common programming convention at the time. Berners-Lee admits that they're completely unnecessary, saying: "Really, if you think about it, it doesn't need the //. I could have designed it not to have the //."

Wally Conron (Labradoodle)
Tom Karen (Raleigh Chopper)
Vincent Connare (Comic Sans)
Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot) Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English crime novelist, short story writer and playwright. She is the best-selling novelist ever. She also made the longest play ever. She is remembered for making multiple mystery books including; And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient... read more

Poirot first appeared in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (published in 1920) and exited in Curtain (published in 1975). By 1930, Agatha Christie found Poirot "insufferable," and by 1960 she felt that he was a "detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep."

Yet the public loved him, and Christie refused to kill him off, claiming that it was her duty to produce what the public liked. Essentially, Poirot, being her most beloved creation and her best source of revenue, meant she had no choice but to keep him around.

Alfred Binet (IQ Test)
John Larson (Lie Detector)
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