Ancient Web: Douglas Self's RetroTech Museum Keeps the Failed Inventions

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Most histories of engineering explain which machines worked. Douglas Self's Museum of RetroTechnology is also interested in all the machines that somebody thought might work.

Explore the Museum of RetroTechnology

This is a large, hand-organized index of the unusual corners of mechanical, electrical, transport, and sound technology. A visitor can move from rotary steam engines to compressed-air distribution networks, from strange recording systems to unconventional locomotives. The museum is arranged like an institution with many departments, except the curator can keep adding rooms when another odd machine catches his attention.

One section covers engines powered by improbable working fluids: ammonia, petrol vapor, mercury, carbon disulfide, and even boiling potassium. These are not presented as recommendations. They are historical attempts to solve engineering problems, often at the expense of introducing entirely new ones.

A museum that keeps room for the strange ideas

The unusual working fluids gallery explains why the familiar choice of steam beat so many alternatives. Another gallery on compound combustion engines traces attempts, beginning in 1879, to wring more work out of hot exhaust by adding expansion cylinders.

Elsewhere there are compressed-air aircraft, mechanical horses, clockwork-powered devices, hydraulic microphones, rotating steam boilers, and what Self labels 'gearwheels from hell.' The locomotive section alone is listed as spanning more than a hundred pages.

The individual galleries often include an opening date and an update history. The dicycle and diwheel gallery, for example, says it opened in January 2002 and was still receiving additions in 2025. That mix of early-web origins and continued editorial maintenance is one reason the museum matters.

There is already a separate Ancient Web article about Self's reduced-wheel vehicles. This is a different subject: the much wider catalog of experimental technologies, particularly the power systems and mechanical inventions that never became ordinary.

The pages carry sketches, old photographs, source notes, patent references, dates, and opinionated technical commentary. They do not disguise how speculative some old ideas were, nor assume that every inventor was a misunderstood genius.

A conventional technology timeline gets shorter as it approaches the winners. Self's museum grows larger as it explores the alternatives.

Browse the Museum of RetroTechnology index.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.