10 World-Changing Inventions That Were Total Rip-Offs

When history begins to shift in a totally new direction, it tends to be down the intervention of singular figures with a singular version. At least, that's how the textbooks tell it, from the teachings of Jesus Christ getting passed down for millenia to Adolf Hitler managing to convince a whole bunch of countries to embrace fascism to Ed Sheeran tricking people into thinking he's cool. In reality, these things were a long time coming, and there were a lot of other people involved in these huge, world-changing events, societal and cultural shifts. Ed Sheeran had a PR team, economic factors helped give rise to the right-wing, and Jesus didn't actually write all of those books about himself, did he? Then there are the other cases, where the people credited with changing the world actually being imposters. Or at least victims of mistaken identity. The modern prophets are inventors, the men and women who come up with some device of gadget that manages to set absolutely everyone into a tizzy, from Al Gore's internet to Thomas Edison's record player. ...Or is that Tim Berners-Lee's internet and Emile Berliner's record player? And those aren't the only game-changers that are frequently attributed to people other than the geniuses who dreamt them up. From the origins of Monopoly to the terrible secret of Thomas Edison, here are ten world-changing inventions that were total rip-offs.