The Sleep Eliminator (1923)
Office workers are generally used to that mid-afternoon lag where they reach for an energy drink or cup of coffee to make it through the rest of the day. But Gernsback had a special idea for how to keep people awake at their desks: tiny electric shocks.
The idea was that electrical energy from this “sleep eliminator” was supposed to be stimulating, mostly zapping the air around the worker. But the device Gernsback imagined also gave small shocks to that same person’s chair.
From the March 1923 issue of Science and Invention:
The oxygen, as well as the ozone with which the air is charged in small quantities, helps to rejuvenate the system. A secondary electrical system gives the nerves certain rhythmic shocks, almost imperceptible to the subject. These are used to stimulate the nerve cells that have become sluggish. It is thought that by these means sleep can and will be eliminated entirely.
Now, these shocks weren’t supposed to hurt the worker, but it’s easy to imagine this invention going south very quickly. It was extremely popular, after all, to give people electric shocks in the 1920s.
