# What is the biggest what-if in the history of technology?

> Machines that were shelved, defunded, outvoted or burned. Each one is an argument about how different the present could look.

*By YPB Team · Published September 1, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-biggest-what-if-in-the-history-of-technology*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Babbage's Analytical Engine** — score 1000/1000
   A programmable mechanical computer designed in the 1830s and never built in its designer's lifetime.
2. **The Hindenburg** — score 754/1000
   The airship era ended in 34 seconds at Lakehurst in 1937.
3. **Betamax** — score 717/1000
   Sony's format, widely judged the better picture, beaten in the shops by VHS.
4. **Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower** — score 636/1000
   Tesla's Long Island tower for worldwide wireless power, abandoned in 1906 when J. P. Morgan stopped paying.
5. **Da Vinci's flying machine** — score 636/1000
   Sketched aerial screws and gliders three centuries before anyone had an engine light enough to fly.
6. **Edison's Pearl Street Station** — score 538/1000
   The 1882 DC station that lit lower Manhattan, and the system that lost the current war.
7. **Concorde** — score 538/1000
   Supersonic passenger flight, retired in 2003, with nothing since flying as fast.
8. **Google Glass** — score 418/1000
   A wearable display pulled from consumer sale in 2015, a decade before the market wanted one.
9. **The Saturn V** — score 418/1000
   Never lost a crew, never flew after 1973, and the production line was shut down.
10. **The Library of Alexandria** — score 269/1000
   Antiquity's great collection, lost in stages, and the standing symbol of knowledge that did not survive.
11. **The Xerox Alto** — score 269/1000
   The 1973 machine with windows, a mouse and Ethernet, which Xerox never turned into a product.
12. **The Antikythera mechanism** — score 269/1000
   A geared Greek astronomical calculator whose sophistication did not reappear for over a thousand years.
13. **The Soviet N1 rocket** — score 269/1000
   The Moon rocket that failed all four launches and ended the Soviet lunar programme.
14. **The Segway** — score 269/1000
   Promised to reshape cities, ended up on tourist tours and out of production in 2020.

Tags: 20th-century, science, inventors