Unintelligent Design

A museum of failed and stupid inventions has opened to popular acclaim and won a £400,000 government grant. The Museum of Nonsense in Herrnbaumgarten, Austria – dreamt up by Fritz Gall, himself a failed inventor – will move to a larger home later this year so it can cope with the thousands of monthly visitors.

“We held our first fair for rubbish inventions and thought we’d get 20 or 30 visitors but more than 5,000 came and so we knew we were obviously onto something,” says Mr Gall.

“We have government funding and some private backing and we hope the people out there like nonsense just as much as we do.”

The museum features essentials such as the ‘portable anonymyser’, a piece of black card on a stick so that people seeking anonymity in a public place can black out their eyes.

Padded rolling pins, bristleless toothbrushes, leadless pencils for cautious civil servants, and portable holes also occupy this hall of useless fame.