This wonderful and under achieved invention is the ‘Bonafide Ventilated Top Hat’ as advertised by John Fuller and Co. in 1849. This beautiful creation was presented on Mirror, an article based website which seems to present entertainment based topics.
At the time of its creation, middle class men wore top hats as a symbol of prestige. It was a way of showing that you were established or well off in society. As many of us know, there are many cultural trends, which are not considered the most comfortable ideas. The trend of top hats among gentleman would fall under this category due to the amount of heat and moisture, which would build up throughout the day. Thus, we see the motivation for the strange invention shown above. The producer, John Fuller and Co., assumed that men would need a better form of ventilation within their top hats so that there would be less heat builds up inside of the hat. This would of course lead to reduce amounts of oils and moistures in the hair and scalp of the wearer. So of course the demand for such an invention is obvious, but perhaps it was the rapidly changing trends within society, which made this invention unsuccessful.
This invention seems odd due to the culturally out dated style of the hat, but if we observe items such as, the ‘trucker hat,’ we can see that not much has changed. Today, we witness women tripping and falling in heels to support an image of beauty. In other cases, you’ve probably seen men wearing expensive watches around their wrists even though they’re completely out of date since the invention of the cell phone. The point is that people will wear ridiculous things if they believe it will impress someone they know or perhaps they don’t know. The cultural movement of the industrial revolution during this time allowed such a thing to be considered acceptable to wear.
Today, wearing the Bonafide Top Hat may draw some unwanted attention. Since the symbols of prestige and establishment have changed over the years, it seems strange to think that some tall hat would represent some level of success. The only time that we ever see someone wearing such attire is for some sort of re-enactment or a ‘Steam Punk’ meet up. Inventions like this one were doomed to fail primarily because of dramatically influenced cultural movements.
We as a society tend to change our tastes in clothing rapidly. Our ideas which are presented on the runway today are heavily influenced by current political issues or cultural movements. As technology evolves with us, we can see the exchange rate of information growing exponentially. The scientific revolution was a turning point for society. We began to look at objects in our own space through the scientific method. Thus, we see many useful and at the same time useless ideas being created. The ventilated top hat had a legitimate motivation, but couldn’t keep up with a rapidly changing culture which it was introduced to at the time.
Tech History 