Museum of Inventions That Never Existed

Welcome to the east wing. Each room below is dedicated to an invention that worked well enough to be built and badly enough to be forgotten.

• The Clockwork Librarian (1888) — A brass reading-room assistant that fetched books from shelves using a catalogue of punched cards.
• The Glass Harmonic Cooler (1904) — A food cabinet that claimed to keep milk fresh by surrounding it with ringing glass.
• The Velocipede Mail Kite (1897) — A postal kite towed by a bicycle that lifted letters over rivers where there was no bridge.
• The Lantern Cinema of Ostrand (1859) — A moving-picture theatre built decades before film, using a ring of painted lanterns and a spinning mirror.