This story appears in the June 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine. Thomas Edison liked to say that he never failed. He succeeded every now and again with an invention that would change the ...

But with the introduction of electricity in the 19th century, society and the world at large changed rapidly and ... Take a look back at some inventions that brought us out of the darkness of ...

Not every good invention gets off the ground, whether due to money problems, or simply because it was way ahead of its time. If some of these had been successful, then our world could have looked ...