The Museum of Failure has opened – are you fed up with museums that show a continuous path to glory like some socialist republic? Take a walk on the failed side
Pan Up
In June this year the museum of failure opened in Helsingborg, Sweden; it is full of the gadgets we like to laugh at today with the benefit of hindsight. Most are there because the people who invested in them thought they were a good idea at the time; if anyone disagreed they didn’t do so loudly enough.
The definition of failure offered by the museum’s curator Samuel West is something which deviates from expected and desired results; for example, the Segway may work, however it was a failure as it was supposed to revolutionise transport but ended up a tourist novelty. Prototypes are not necessarily failures if they don’t work, because they were built to test an idea and most ideas don’t work. Innovation is really a story of failure with occasional success, yet many see it as an objective in itself.
The point of the Swedish museum, apart from preserving the artefacts, is to learn from the mistakes. This is also the point of my virtual rail version, there is a moral to every item, and there is certain to be at least one reader who disagree…
