Water-Powered Cars, Safe Cigarettes and More Inventions You'll Never See (PHOTOS)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Our friends at TruTV have shared with us these amazing inventions that we'll likely never be able to use.

We think these 18 innovative creations are some of the most suppressed of all time. Find out why:

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• The Original Electric Car: Unplugged?

  <em>Credit: Getty Images</em> Perhaps the most notorious suppressed invention is the General Motors EV1, subject of the 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? The EV1 was the world's first mass-produced electric car, with 800 of them up for lease from GM in the late '90s. GM ended the EV1 line in 1999, stating that consumers weren't happy with the limited driving range of the car's batteries, making it unprofitable to continue production. Many skeptics, however, believe GM killed the EV1 under pressure from oil companies, who stand to lose the most if high-efficiency vehicles conquer the market. It didn't help that GM hunted down and destroyed every last EV1, ensuring the technology would die out.

• The Death Of The American Streetcar

  <em>Photo credit: Getty</em> In 1921, if the streetcar industry wasn't actually naming streetcars Desire, it was certainly desiring more streetcars. They netted $1 billion, causing General Motors to hemorrhage $65 million in the face of a thriving industry. GM retaliated by buying and closing hundreds of independent railway companies, boosting the market for gas-guzzling GM buses and cars. While a recent urban movement to rescue mass transit has been underway, it is unlikely we'll ever see streetcars return to their former glory.

• The 99-MPG Car

  Photo credit: Landov The holy grail of automotive technology is the 99-mpg car. Although the technology has been available for years, automakers have deliberately withheld it from the U.S. market. In 2000, the New York Times reported a little-known fact, at least to most: A diesel-powered dynamo called the Volkswagen Lupo had driven around the world averaging higher than 99 mpg. The Lupo was sold in Europe from 1998 to 2005 but, once again, automakers prevented it from coming to market; they claimed Americans had no interest in small, fuel-efficient cars.

• Free Energy

  Nikola Tesla was more than just the inspiration for a hair metal band, he was also an undisputed genius. In 1899, he figured out a way to bypass fossil-fuel-burning power plants and power lines, proving that "free energy" could be harnessed using ionization in the upper atmosphere to produce electrical vibrations. J.P. Morgan, who had been funding Tesla's research, had a bit of buyer's remorse when he realized that free energy for all wasn't as profitable as, say, actually charging people for every watt of energy use. Morgan then drove another nail in free energy's coffin by chasing away other investors, ensuring Tesla's dream would die.

• Miracle Cancer Cure

  <em>Photo credit: Getty Images</em> In 2001, Nova Scotian Rick Simpson discovered that a cancerous spot on his skin disappeared within a few days of applying an essential oil made from marijuana. Since then, Simpson and others have treated thousands of cancer patients with incredible success. Researchers in Spain have confirmed that THC, an active compound in marijuana, kills brain-tumor cells in human subjects and shows promise with breast, pancreatic and liver tumors. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, however, classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has no accepted medical use, unlike Schedule II drugs, like cocaine and methamphetamine, which may provide medical benefits. What a buzzkill.

• Water-Powered Vehicles

  Despite how silly it sounds, water-fueled vehicles do exist. The most famous is Stan Meyer's dune buggy, which achieved 100 miles per gallon and might have become more commonplace had Meyer not succumbed to a suspicious brain aneurysm at 57. Insiders have loudly claimed that Meyer was poisoned after he refused to sell his patents or end his research. Fearing a conspiracy, his partners have all but gone underground (or should we say underwater?) and taken his famed water-powered dune buggy with them. We just hope someone finally brings back the amphibious car.

• Chronovisor

  <em>Photo credit: Getty Images</em> What if you had a device that could see into the future and revisit the past? And what if you didn't need Christopher Lloyd to help you? Father Pellegrino Maria Ernetti, an Italian priest, claimed in the 1960s to have invented what he called a Chronovisor, something that allowed him to witness Christ's crucifixion. The device supposedly enabled viewers to watch any event in human history by tuning in to remnant vibrations that are caused by every action. (His team of researchers and builders included Enrico Fermi, who also worked on the first atomic bomb). On his deathbed, Fermi admitted that he had faked viewings of ancient Greece and Christ's demise, but insisted the Chronovisor, which had by then vanished, still worked. Unsurprisingly, conspiracy theorists say the Vatican is now the likely owner of the original Chronovisor.

• Rife Devices

  American inventor Royal Rife (his real name), in 1934, cured 14 "terminal" cancer patients and hundreds of animal cancers by aiming his "beam ray" at what he called the "cancer virus." So why isn't the Rife Ray in use today? Barry Lynes, in his 1987 book The Cancer Cure That Worked, details how Rife's invention was discredited by Morris Fishbein, the director of the American Medical Association (AMA), after his offers to buy a share of the technology were rebuffed, although this has never been proven and the AMA has denied it. A 1953 U.S. Senate special investigation concluded that Fishbein and the AMA had conspired with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to suppress various alternative cancer treatments that conflicted with the AMA's pre-determined view that "radium, x-ray therapy and surgery are the only recognized treatments for cancer."

• Cloudbuster

  <em>Photo credit: Wilhelm Reich's estate</em> In 1953, when severe drought threatened the blueberry harvest in the state of Maine, Dr. Wilhelm Reich, the inventor of a supposed rainmaking device called the Cloudbuster, and he was contracted to bring rain. The Bangor Daily News reported at the time that within hours of setting up the Cloudbuster, nearly � inch of rain had fallen across the area, despite no precipitation in the forecast. Curiously, it does not seem that Reich attempted this feat again and, in 1954, the government put a stop to his work entirely. After Reich's conviction for selling a phone-booth-sized box that he claimed cured the common cold and impotence, in violation of FDA rules, Reich was sentenced to prison, where he soon died. The court also ordered that Reich's inventions, their parts and any writing about them be destroyed.

• Overunity Generator

  A number of overunity generators, which produce more energy than they take to run, have surfaced in the past century. Ironically, they have been more trouble than they were worth. In nearly all cases, a supposedly working prototype has been unable to make it to commercial production as a result of various corporate or government forces working against the technology. Recently, the Lutec 1000, an "electricity amplifier," has been making steady progress toward a final commercial version. Will consumers soon be able to buy it, or will it too be suppressed?

• Cold Fusion

  <em>Photo credit: Getty Images</em> Billions of dollars have been spent researching how to create energy using controlled "hot fusion," a risky and unpredictable line of experimentation. Meanwhile, garage scientists and a fringe group of university researchers have been getting closer to harnessing the power of "cold fusion," which is much more stable and controllable, but far less supported by government and foundation money. In 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced that they had made a breakthrough and had observed cold fusion in a glass jar on their lab bench. To say the reaction they received was chilly would be an understatement. CBS's 60 Minutes described how the resulting backlash from the well-funded hot-fusion crowd sent the researchers underground and overseas, where within a few years their funding dried up, forcing them to drop their pursuit of clean energy.

• Hot Fusion

  <em>Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images</em> Cold fusion isn't the only technology to get buried by hot-headed scientists. When two physicists who were working on the decades-long Tokamak Hot Fusion project at Los Alamos Laboratory stumbled across a cheaper, safer method of creating energy from colliding atoms, they were allegedly forced to repudiate their own discoveries or be fired; the lab feared losing the torrent of government money for Tokamak. In retaliation, the lead researchers created the Focus Fusion Society, which raises private money to fund their research outside of government interference.

• Magnetofunk And Himmelkompass

  <em>Photo credit: Getty Images</em> Nazi scientists spent much of World War II hidden in a covert military base somewhere in the arctic, creating the Magnetofunk. This alleged invention was designed to deflect the compasses of Allied aircraft that might be searching for Point 103, as the base was known. The aircraft pilots would think they were flying in a straight line, but would gradually curve around Point 103 without ever knowing they were deceived. The Himmelkompass allowed German navigators to orient themselves to the position of the sun, rather than magnetic forces, so they could find Point 103 despite the effects of the Magnetofunk. According to Wilhelm Landig, a former SS officer, these two devices were closely guarded secrets of the Third Reich. So closely guarded were they that neither device apparently survived the collapse of Hitler's Germany, although the real tragedy is that no one has ever named their band Magnetofunk.

• A Safer Cigarette?

  <em>Photo credit: Getty Images</em> In the 1960s, the Liggett & Myers tobacco company created a product called the XA, a cigarette in which most of the stick's carcinogens had been eliminated. Dr. James Mold, Liggett's Research Director, reported in court documents in the case of "The City and County of San Francisco vs. Phillip Morris, Inc.," that Phillip Morris threatened to "clobber" Liggett if they did not adhere to an industry agreement never to reveal information about the negative health effects of smoking. By advertising a "safer" alternative, they would be admitting the dangers of tobacco use. The lawsuit was dismissed on a technicality and Phillip Morris never addressed the accusations. Despite their own scientists' publication of research that showed less cancer in mice exposed to smoke from the XA, Liggett & Myers issued a press released denying evidence of cancer in humans as a result of tobacco use, and the XA never saw the light of day.

• The Phoebus Cartel

  <em>Getty Images</em> Phillips, GE and Osram engaged in a conspiracy from 1924 to 1939 with the goal of controlling the fledgling light-bulb industry, according to a report published in Time magazine six years later. The alleged cartel set prices and suppressed competing technologies that would have produced longer-lasting and more efficient light bulbs. By the time the cabal dissolved, the industry-standard incandescent bulb was established as the dominant source of artificial light across Europe and North America. Not until the late 1990s did compact fluorescent bulbs begin to edge into the worldwide lighting market as an alternative.

• The Coral Castle

  <em>Getty Images</em> How did Ed Leedskalnin build the massive Coral Castle in Homestead, Florida, out of giant chunks of coral weighing up to 30 tons each with no heavy equipment and no outside help? Theories abound, including anti-gravity devices, magnetic resonance and alien technology, but the answer may never be known. Leedskalnin died in 1951 without any written plans or clues as to his techniques. The centerpiece of the castle, which is now a museum open to the public, is a nine-ton gate that used to move with light pressure from one finger. After the gate's bearings wore out in the 1980s, a crew of five took more than two weeks to fix it, although they never did get it to work as effortlessly as Leedskalnin's original masterpiece.

• Hemp Bio-fuel

  <em>Photo credit: Getty Images</em> The father of our country, George Washington, who is rumored to have said "I cannot tell a lie," was a proud supporter of the hemp seed. Of course, the only thing more suppressed in this country than an honest politician is hemp, which is often mistakenly for marijuana and therefore unfairly maligned. Governmental roadblocks, meanwhile, prevent hemp from becoming the leader in extracting ethanol, allowing environmentally damaging sources like corn to take over the ethanol industry. Despite the fact that it requires fewer chemicals, less water and less processing to do the same job, hemp has never caught on. Experts also lay the blame at the feet of (who else?) Presidential candidates, who kiss up to Iowa corn growers for votes.

 

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Comments

[Harleygent]

05:08 PM on 09/18/2012

What a great list of Urban Myths! None true yet we all want to believe. Battery technology that is ancient, and toxic but still being attempted. I have a 110 year chart on battery chemical reactions and is still current in science. Toxic CFL bulbs with more problems than they solve. 100 MPG cars. I built a dune buggy in 1973 with just a roll bar. After removing the body it weighed less than 800 lbs. It originally got 39 MPG on the 40 HP engine. It got over 80 MPG with the weight gone and a 5 gallon tank. Weight reduction is the only significant MPG improve in vehicles since 1940. What about Ponce de Leon's fountain youth. Keep on believing, it keeps P.T.Barnum from rolling in his grave.

[Jiggins]

06:49 PM on 09/18/2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Lupo

It's more like 78 mpg. The point you are missing is the absence of the Lupo in the U.S. market.

[Harleygent]

07:22 PM on 09/18/2012

The absence of the Lupo, the $6K Indian Car and the super cheap Korean car is not the auto industry. It is our wonderful over-regulated government oversite on EPA/Safety/nutcake regulations, etc. Look at the Smart Car at $20,000 a pop. That was to pay for all the safety requirements etc. It should sell for $12K max. That added weight etc. and makes this vehicle less efficient also. I tried to build my own car in Caliphony and you cannot do it without regulations and inspections costing it hundreds of thousands to make, with registration at $5,000.00 plus a year. Why would Caliphony want a car that would reduce their sales tax revenue and their high priced registration fees. I pay $194.00 a year registration on a 1997 pickup truck. Get it?

[Hunter3203]

11:54 AM on 09/19/2012

Your link doesn't mention that that 78 mpg was achieved on the Euro test not the EPA test. The Euro test always produces numbers FAR higher than our own EPA. The Jetta Diesel 2.0 liter 140 hp version is on sale in both Europe and the US and is made at the same factory in Mexico. It's rated at 42 mpg hwy in the US and 57.4 on the Euro cycle.

The EPA revamped the way they did their tests a few years ago because of all the complaints about how no one could ever meet the posted numbers. They got it about right.

[Azraile]

07:23 PM on 09/18/2012

a lot of that is true...

They just finished proving THC suppresses cancer cells.

A bunch of kids built a car for a collage project that got like almost 200 MPG (though it only weighed like 500 bls lol)

hemp makes the best paper and bio fuel source... it grows fast and don't deplete the nutrients in the soil no where near as much as other crops like corn.

They did have electric and hybrid cars way before they were released, and the same with light bulbs. There mass production was stalled intentionally. And better technologies are still being stalled.

And we do have hot fusion, it's just right now the way we do it the energy we get out of it compared to the energy we put in.... it's just not worth it. The Tokamak and other torus reactors work, they just don't make much net energy and until they find a way to reduce the amount of energy it takes to run one... or find a better way to harness the energy it creates, there is no point in building them.

[Hunter3203]

12:07 PM on 09/19/2012

Part of the problem is all of the regulations that an actual car manufacturer has to meet. Your 500 lb car would never pass either the crash tests or emission tests = illegal to sell to the general public. And those standards are constantly evolving.

[WILLIEMOJORISIN]

11:05 AM on 09/18/2012

The 1st electric car in the 1990's ? more like the 1890's who writes this drivel?

[lifehub]

11:08 AM on 09/18/2012

lolol........real men don't drive 'electric cars'.

[WILLIEMOJORISIN]

11:11 AM on 09/18/2012

Lol agreed.

[DCR1960]

12:19 AM on 09/18/2012

this H2O powered car sounds almost like a miraculous GREAT invention....too BAD that it will be ruled a "no-go" by the oil companies since it "interferes" with "them" making extra-money.......Chin-marin....

[Phah King]

09:38 PM on 09/17/2012

Silly humans. You are naive if you think the powers that be will let someone stop them from making hundreds of billions a year. Silly silly humans.

[NoBibleNeeded]

07:48 PM on 09/17/2012

SO the government basically BULLIES anyone not on their PAYROLL...

[ATime4Strength]

03:45 AM on 09/18/2012

Always! Just ask Gibson Guitars and Gallup.

But, we need more of it, from what I seem to hear on the HP. Gov'ts just not big enough, controlling enough, regulating enough, Yet.

[dknowles60]

04:19 PM on 09/19/2012

ditto

[littlesavg]

12:24 PM on 09/17/2012

I have heard rumors about a 100 mpg carburator since the Seventies. And that GM bought the patents and shelved it. So,no, not suprised. As far as the pot being used externally, heck, we have used it for centuries. My best freinds mom was a brujah back in NM. She put some mixed in a poultice on an infected cut on my arm, it was gone in 24 hours. Its not owned by Big Pharm and it is not addictive, unlike Big Pharm's products, so Big Pharm will do anything to keep it criminalized. And I do mean anything.

[mrknobs]

03:21 PM on 09/17/2012

As a materials scientist who has worked in this are for 30 years, I can tell you that there never was a 100mpg carburetor, unless it was on a modest motorcyle. The laws of physics can't be cheated. There's only so much energy in a gallon of gasoline, and the only way to get a vehicle to go significantly farther on it is to reduce the weight of the vehicle. Fuel injectors help, manual transmission helps, aerodynamics help, hybrid helps, but none of those things make a large difference.

And of course as weight goes down, so does safety, comfort, power, and carrying capacity until you basically have a motorcycle with a sheet metal or plastic box around it.

People go on about how many mpg their Prius gets, but for overall driving (city and highway) mpg a hybrid is comparable to a compact conventional car like a Sentra with a small (1.5 L) engine. For less than 5mpg more than a conventional subcompact both the buyer and the environment pay a substantial price.

[RTIII]

05:41 PM on 09/17/2012

The Lupo is a REAL CAR. I've seen one, and it's not the dinky little motorcycle with tin sides that you might describe.

Or, let me guess here, you never actually read the article?

It happens that the energy you get from a fuel used in an internal combustion engine has a non linear relationship to compression ratio where the energy derived goes toward an exponential, nearly vertical line as compression ratio is increased. This is why diesel engines are so effective - with the right design you can get a LOT of energy out of them.

Normal, every day vehicles get 50 mpg out of fuel in Europe all the time. It's only here in the USA where there's a "that's impossible!" viewpoint.

[blaze13290]

05:50 PM on 09/17/2012

SURE!!

[mrlecher]

12:17 PM on 09/17/2012

I don't view them all as conspiracy "theories." I remember the EV-1. They said there was no "consumer interst" even though thousands of people were willing to pay up to 10 times the purported list price for one. But it was nothing doing for some strange reason...but it wasn't lack of consumer interest.

[Hunter3203]

01:07 PM on 09/17/2012

Actually if you watch the movie(Who killed the electric car), people offered to continuing leasing the EV1s at the same price which was heavily subsidized by GM. Nissan has sold 4,228 Leafs so far this year. That is a terribly low sales rate and one at which Nissan is losing money. EVs are niche products with today's battery technology. It is simply too expensive or too limiting for the vast majority of buyers. Solve the battery problem and people will line up to buy EVs.

[mrknobs]

03:27 PM on 09/17/2012

Exactly right, and the battery problem will never be solved, at least not using the metal / electrolyte model. There hasn't been a big breakthrough in battery technology since Nazi Germany developed the sintered plate nickel cadmium battery.

[DCR1960]

12:21 AM on 09/18/2012

WHAT are YOU talking about? Get Real!!!

[acarioti]

12:05 PM on 09/17/2012

Auto-making, pharmaceudicals, and electricity supply are al billion dollar industries. The major companies involved would and could never allow these type of products in to the marketplace.

As a matter of fact, it would hurt our ecnomy if they did become available. Too many jobs and financial infrastructure depend on these industries as they are.

Too bad for us consumers.

[Earthling1125]

12:38 PM on 09/18/2012

The flip side is NOT making available these types of products will deplete every last natural resource on the planet and kill numerous species and ecosystems along the way (this is already happening). We can't exist on this planet without those things - so what's the point?

New jobs researching, creating, building, and maintaining these technologies would replace those lost allowing the old, inefficient, dirty, and dangerous technologies to die out.

Perhaps you've simply lost faith in human innovation and evolution - especially in the face of the fear-mongering, controlling PTB? Couldn't really blame you if you have.

[hat1701d]

11:57 AM on 09/17/2012

No, but with the Volkswagen XL-1 in in hot climate testing currently and having all ready passed cold climate testing earlier, we will see the first limited production models in the states in the next couple of years. How many MPGs? Somewhere between 200 MPG and 236 MPG if it continues on track. A Diesel hybrid, who would have thought......

[Hunter3203]

01:10 PM on 09/17/2012

Not exactly a mainstream product though is it. It also remains to be seen if it can pass today's safety standards.

There's a reason you don't see a lot of diesel hybrids on the road. Hybrids add several thousand dollars to the cost of a car and diesels also add several thousand dollars to the price. Combine that and you end up with a vehicle that costs roughly $10,000 more than a comparable ICE vehicle.

[hat1701d]

05:16 PM on 09/17/2012

No more "un-mainstream" than any other hybrid. Just powered by a diesel engine instead of a gasoline. Yes, it does add extra cost. However, Volkswagen has pretty well perfected small diesel tech when it comes to road vehicles. The other benefit is that diesel engines are more robust, better at fuel efficiency and generate more torque. Currently in America, you see NO diesel hybrids on the road...that is the point to the development of this car.

[RTIII]

05:45 PM on 09/17/2012

News to you: Diesel engines _are_ ICE - Internal Combustion Engine. Just because the combustion is initiated through autoignition doesn't mean it's not combusted.

[Your Momma]

02:45 PM on 09/17/2012

Diesel hybrids... State of the art technology...Oh wait, dont trains have diesel hybrid technology? YES!

[mrknobs]

03:37 PM on 09/17/2012

Trains are ideally suited for hybrid technology because they require a tremendous amount of torque to get their heavy loads moving from a standstill. Electric motors have the same torque at low speed as at high, whereas gasoline engines don't have their best torque at higher RPMs and thus require a transmission to keep the engine in the best rpm zone for torque across the entire speed range of the vehicle.

[Amped]

09:10 AM on 09/17/2012

Human innovation suppressed through crony capitalism and its all relegated to a weird news section sponsored by True TV? That's sad. Apple anyone?

[elogco]

08:38 AM on 09/17/2012

Thy name is Quackery.

[Ricardo Martin]

08:33 AM on 09/17/2012

It makes perfect sense that THC has the same benefit as it has detriment: it kills brain tumors while it kills living brain cells.

[RTIII]

05:46 PM on 09/17/2012

Actually, it does the former not the latter.

[Tom Airhart]

06:48 PM on 09/17/2012

Ah, but it does kill brain cells and even more so than ethel alcohol beverages do. I'm thinking that you are a lay person who has more of a personal rather than scientific interest in what you say. Unless you hold Ph.D. and/or M.D. degree you're not qualified to even comment with any degree of credibility regarding the above. If you were qualified you wouldn't be commenting on this message board.

[cleokaftan]

07:33 AM on 09/17/2012

I wasn't expecting a conspiracy theorist's countdown list.

[mrknobs]

03:38 PM on 09/17/2012

That's exactly what this is.

[RTIII]

05:46 PM on 09/17/2012

Some of these are _very_real._

[democratsaint]

07:19 AM on 09/17/2012

yes the greatness of capitalism,isn't a marvel,buy what makes you lose money and bury it.so much for innovation of the 'free' market.this is WHY we patents need to be 2 years,period.we kill innovation off with this kind of crap.

[mrknobs]

03:39 PM on 09/17/2012

If you reduce patents to two years, no one will spend the large sums of money required to invent new things. Alternately, if possible, they'll go back to trade secret practices and the result will be the same.

[erotke]

07:18 AM on 09/17/2012

My take on fuel economy is to have cars that can auto-charge. A socket in a garage and on parking lot which charges the car parked on it. It should also have a fuel tank as back up. This should be offered as after-sale service and companies or offices that are conscious of global warming.
Eventually cars might charge wireless.
Push the folds of science!

[Sunandwaves]

09:20 AM on 09/17/2012

"Conscious of global warming"? LOL Perhaps you fail to realize 50% of our energy stations produce electricity by burning coal. An industry Obama has said he is going to bankrupt. Then Obama pushes the electric car. HAHA In addition, the US grid would NEVER be able to handle the load. Of course ANYTHING is possible....but at what cost?

[J0E1]

11:04 AM on 09/17/2012

The US grid would be fine.  95% of all charging of electric vehicles will be at home overnight during the least busy time of day when the grid is barely taxed.  Obama might be bankrupting coal but being in the industry, I assure you, these coal plants are slowly converting to natural gas.  On top of it, an electric motor is nearly 90% efficient compared to the 20% efficiency of internal combustion engines which means it requires far less energy in (read: electricity from coal plants) to push the same energy out as a vehicle using gas.

[erotke]

11:33 AM on 09/17/2012

I understand both argument and urge diversification. Let me also agree with you that the world has a KNOWN energy reserve that can sustain it for 400 years so we wont run out of oil in our lifetime.
I was thinking about the price. Would it be nice to live in a day when you don't have to stop at a gas station and your gas bill is 50% less? When we don't argue about rising oil prices? Its possible. Even electric production can be diversified and more sources explored.