What’s the most useless, pointless, resource-wasting consumer gadget that you have seen, bought or been given in the past 12 months? That’s the question at the heart of the first annual Landfill prize, which has already attracted a host of nominations, including automatic cucumber peelers, hi-spec plug-in air fresheners and a £150 electric toothbrush.

Today’s consumer society has become astonishingly adept at inventing pointless, hopeless, resource-sucking gizmos, but let’s not pretend we have a monopoly on this. Since the Victorian era, some of humankind’s most creative brains have kept themselves busy creating answers for needs that didn’t exist and solutions that are more cumbersome than the problems they promised to tackle. To inspire nominations for the Landfill Prize, here’s our list of the 19th and 20th centurys’ most pathetic, unnecessary and patently daft inventions.

1. The combined plow and gun
Patent no 35600, issued 1862

Rather than turn your sword into a ploughshare, why not combine your plough with a medium-sized artillery piece? It’s bound to be so much more effective than shouting “get orf moi land” at errant ramblers. Or, as the American inventor claimed, “Its utility is unquestionable, especially when used in border localities, subject to savage feuds and guerrilla warfare. In times of danger may be used in the field, ready charged with its deadly missiles of ball or grape. The share serves to anchor it firmly in the ground and enables it to resist the recoil, while the hand levers furnish convenient means of giving it the proper direction.” Why don’t the perpetually bickering Archers have one?

2. Device for waking persons from sleep
Patent no 256265, issued 1882

Sometimes, an alarm clock just isn’t quite enough for rousing heavy sleepers to face the day. So why not hang an array of weights on a frame above the snoozer’s head and, with the help of clockwork machinery, drop them upon their head until they wake? “When they fall it will strike a light blow, sufficient to awaken the sleeper, but not heavy enough to cause pain,” assures the inventor. Surely it’s just bound to cause stubborn sleepers simply to pull the duvet over their heads.

3. Balloon propelled by eagles or vultures
Patent no 863087, issued 1887

First, catch your eagle or vulture. Then attach the large bird to a balloon cupola, point its beak in desired direction, then sit back, relax and enjoy the in-flight snacks and movie. There’s a kind of simple genius to this idea, but a few potential snags make themselves apparent. Yes, there will be protests by animal lovers, but perhaps more pertinent is the fact that large birds of prey or carrion are notoriously uncooperative in matters of providing predictable and directable propulsion. Oh, and won’t they peck holes in the balloon?

4. Method of preserving the dead
Patent no 748284, issued 1903

Having trouble finding a suitable memorial for your loved one? How about having them permanently encased in glass? Herkimer J. Karkowski, the New Yorker who devised this tidy and decorative form of body-disposal seems to have been rather less squeamish than the average mourner. He believed that bereaved people would love nothing more than seeing their departed hermetically encased within a block of transparent glass, and thus “maintained for an indefinite period in a perfect and lifelike condition”. If an entire glass-encased relative might take up too much parlour-space, Karkowski suggested just having their head done. An attractive adornment to any mantelpiece. Or a handy doorstop? Glazed looks all round.

5. Moustache and lip guards
Patent no GB191127119, issued 1912

Oh the Edwardians and their moustaches: the damned hairy things seemed to be ever getting in the way, catching fire or becoming unattractively damp and potentially infected. To prevent this last problem, Fritz Baudisch filed a British patent to stop beards and moustaches getting moistened while drinking. His gadget consisted simply of a protective antiseptic paper disk that could be adapted to be folded over the edge of any drinking-vessel. Then, of course, it got damp and filled the toper’s facial hair with papier mache. Drat.

Explore Entrepreneur

• Start-ups

• SME