7 Celebrities Who Invented Amazing Things on the Side

7 Neil Young Improved the Model Train

Regarded as one of the greatest singers and songwriters of all time (or a high-pitched grandpa who looks like a homeless man, depending on your tastes), Neil Young is up there with Led Zeppelin in terms of influence and prominence in your parents' record collection. But just like all hard rockers, Young needs to take some time now and then to chill out. Unlike most rockers, though, Young's private passions have taken the form of a second, more adorable career.

The Invention:

Young is a model train fanatic, and when he wasn't giving your mother un-Christian thoughts, he was also part owner of Lionel, LLC, a model train development company that sold all of his innovations.

What may be his most prominent invention came about while he was trying to come up with a way for his son Ben to enjoy trains as much as he does. Ben has cerebral palsy, and lacks the motor skills necessary to work the intricate controls on many train sets.

But no son of Neil Young was going to be unable to enjoy model trains. Not on his watch. So Young strapped on his train engineer's hat and invented a whole new remote control system called the Trainmaster Command Control, a programmable system that would reduce complex train maneuvers to something Ben could control with the tap of a button.

And, sure, if you're Neil Young's son and you want to follow in your dad's footsteps, you'd probably rather he invent something that makes playing awesome guitar much easier and more accessible instead of improving your ability to screw around with trains, but it's the thought that counts.

6 Zeppo Marx Invented a Heart Attack Alarm

For those of you growing up in the iPod generation, the only Marx Brother you're likely to recognize is Groucho, and only because his likeness makes possible the world's laziest Halloween costume.

But there were four Marx Brothers in the original comedy act, and the youngest, Zeppo, worked as the straight man. Because of this, he never really developed his own comedy persona apart from being "the normal-looking one," and he never became as iconic as his brothers, because you can't really make money selling a normal-looking guy's face as a Halloween mask.

The Invention:

Zeppo didn't find his career in comedy particularly rewarding, at least not compared with his primary love -- engineering. Zeppo was the mechanic of the family, and it was largely his tinkering efforts that kept the family car running. After quitting the Marx Brothers, he formed a company that designed a lot of doodads that wound up making him more money than showbiz ever could.

One of his most notable products was a device he catchily termed the cardiac pulse rate monitor. Kind of like one of James Bond's high-tech gadgets, if James Bond had a severe cholesterol problem. It had two clock faces, one of which told the actual time, while the other one took note of your heart rate. If your pulse started doing a slapstick routine in your chest, the watch would pick it up and an alarm would sound.

It didn't quite revolutionize the medical industry, but it was perfect for anyone who realized they had a serious medical condition but were content to put their lives in the hands of someone who used to slip on banana peels for a living.

5 The Creator of Wonder Woman Invented the Lie Detector

Rightfully tired of the sausagefest that was the world of comic books, in 1941, William Marston (with some help from his wife Elizabeth) created Wonder Woman, the Amazonian warrior with an affinity for S&M and a magical weapon called the Lasso of Truth, which forced anyone ensnared by it to tell the truth. In reality, Marston spent his life trying to build a Lasso of Truth of his very own, which led to ...

The Invention:

The lie detector. More specifically, the version of the test that measures blood pressure. The connection between blood pressure and lying had already been explored in some detail in the late 19th century, but Marston was the first person to actually try building a way to measure it. Though, at this stage, the lie detector was not in lasso form.

Marston first built his device in 1915 when he was a graduate student of psychology at Harvard, with the intent of using it to extract confessions from German POWs. However, despite successful results from tests aimed to find out its effectiveness in interrogation, it was never ever used for such purpose. Actually, that was probably for the best -- by the time he'd finished writing up his results to help persuade the government, it was the end of 1917, thus making any information gained useful only to time travelers.

But Marston may have had some ulterior motives in designing his lie detector. In the process of refining it, he needed somebody to strap down and hogtie into the thing, a job which frequently went to his wife. Now, we're not saying that the modern lie detector owes its existence to the bizarrely specific sexual fetishes of one man, but considering everything we know about Wonder Woman's early career ... actually, yes, that is exactly what we are saying.

4 Robert Heinlein Invented the Waterbed

Robert Heinlein is often nicknamed "The Dean of Science Fiction," up there with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke in terms of influence. If you're going to imagine science fiction writers inventing anything, it's probably going to have a lot of lasers attached to it and not be practical for another 200 years. For that reason, you probably never noticed that Heinlein is responsible for something a little more mundane.

The Invention:

The waterbed. For background, Heinlein served in the U.S. Navy until 1934, when he caught pulmonary tuberculosis, which, like any illness with that number of syllables, is something you really don't want to have. So Heinlein found himself lying in a hospital bed for a long period of time with nothing to do but think about how uncomfortable his bed was.

So, he started doing exactly what science fiction nerds do while the rest of us are imagining attractive people naked -- he drew up absurdly detailed schematics in his mind for a thing that he wished existed. As Heinlein wrote in 1980:

"I designed the waterbed during years as a bed patient in the middle '30s; a pump to control water level, side supports to permit one to float rather than simply lying on a not very soft water-filled mattress. Thermostatic control of temperature, safety interfaces to avoid all possibility of electric shock, waterproof box to make a leak no more important than a leaky hot water bottle rather than a domestic disaster, calculation of floor loads (important!), internal rubber mattress and lighting, reading, and eating arrangements -- an attempt to design the perfect hospital bed by one who had spent too damn much time in hospital beds."

From then on, waterbeds started appearing in all of Heinlein's stories. They turn up in the novels Beyond This Horizon, Double Star and Stranger in a Strange Land. In fact, his descriptions of them were so detailed and accurate that, when someone actually tried to patent the idea in 1968, he was rejected, since technically, Heinlein owned the rights to the idea.

Either Heinlein's was a mind that simply would not and could not quit, or "inventing waterbeds" is just a crazy specific side effect of pulmonary tuberculosis. Either way, waterbeds rule.

3 A Romance Novelist Invented Military Gliders

There's a chance you'll have heard of Barbara Cartland, but unless you're female and over the age of 40, there's a better chance you'll have never read anything she's ever produced. Between writing her first book in 1922 and her death in 2000, she had written 723 romance novels, making her one of the most prolific authors of all time, and all of it is the kind of stuff that has Fabio on the cover with his shirt off.

The Invention:

Somewhere in between writing a novel for just about every month of her entire life, Cartland somehow found time to have hobbies. Her personal interest was gliding, and she was so proficient that she designed a glider that could be towed by an airplane, which she then flew in for over 200 miles over the south coast of England.

This being back in the days when nasty things were brewing in Berlin, the British military was looking for ways to spruce up their defenses, and they discovered some useful applications for Cartland's glider designs. In particular, gliders were instrumental during campaigns like the Normandy landing, with benefits like their relative cheapness and expendability just outweighing the pants-shitting terror of flying into a war zone in an aircraft without an engine.

Cartland's designs were so instrumental for the war effort that she was granted the Bishop Wright Air Industry Award, which probably looked out of place on her mantle alongside the vaguely phallic trophies celebrating her lifetime achievement in soft-core boning.

2 Julius Caesar Pioneered the Comb-Over

We probably don't need to tell you who Julius Caesar was, right? The world's most famous Roman emperor has a reputation for many things, but not really for having invented anything except a popular salad.

The Invention:

Caesar did not actually have anything to do with the Caesar salad, but he is responsible for another staple of the middle class -- the comb-over hairstyle. Just like Donald Trump, Caesar felt that unlimited money and power doesn't quite cut it when you're feeling the sting of male pattern baldness.

If you've ever wondered why Caesar is so often portrayed wearing that leafy thing around his head, it's said that baldness may have been one of his reasons for doing that. However, emperor or not, there had to have been a few social occasions in which the act of wearing shrubbery on your head would have been considered somewhat eccentric. So, he also grew his hair long at the back and brushed it over the front of his head, thus creating the comb-over and the act of manipulating existing hair to present the illusion of flowing locks, which must have seemed like an impressive bit of hair sorcery at the time.

1 Hedy Lamarr Gave Us Cellphones and Wi-Fi

Hedy Lamarr was one of Hollywood's biggest stars during the golden age of cinema, starring in over 35 films alongside the likes of Clark Gable, Judy Garland and Bob Hope. Most of her fame comes from the fact that she gave us one of cinema's first sex scenes, and surprisingly little attention is given to the fact that she basically invented the modern Wi-Fi and cellphone network. Because, hey, tits.

The Invention:

Lamarr had a secret passion for invention, and in fact, by all accounts, she was the world's sexiest mad scientist. While walking down red carpets and simulating onscreen orgasms by day, Lamarr was working in her laboratory by night. Her creations include a fluorescent dog collar and modifications to the Concorde, but most notably, she invented a torpedo guidance system that would actually go on to become the basis of all our wireless communications today.

The idea came about with help from a pianist friend of hers, George Antheil, who helped her design a system for encrypting radio signals using similar principles to a player piano, with perforated paper rolls. Their resulting creation, the unimaginatively named Secret Communication System, was patented in 1942. And if you think it sounds like an awfully primitive device for us to be calling "Wi-Fi," you're right -- but although it was cobbled together from piano parts like a Rube Goldberg machine, it was nevertheless an analogue version of what is known as "spread-spectrum communication technology," which is the basic technology behind all our wireless toys, just with more sophisticated parts.

So why aren't we celebrating Hedy Lamarr as a 1940s version of Steve Jobs? When Lamarr offered her technology to the military, the men in charge laughed and told her not to worry her pretty little head over such things, treating her piano-powered radio system like a child's attempt to build a robot out of toilet paper rolls. They told her that she could best fight Hitler by being pretty and selling war bonds. It wasn't until the 1960s and the Cuban Missile Crisis that the military looked at her invention and recognized its genius. Of course, by that time, her patent had expired. Hard luck, Hedy.

So the next time you're having a conversation with Paris Hilton or one of the Kardashian sisters, pay close attention; that vapid-seeming celebutante just might be inventing time travel.

"Pay close attention to what Kim Kardashian says." That is the worst advice we have ever given in the history of this site.

Adam regards himself as a minor Internet celebrity, and while he shamefully doesn't own any patents (yet), he writes for his own site. You can read the rest of his Cracked articles here.

For more celebrity hidden talents, check out 7 Celebrities Who Had Badass Careers You Didn't Know About and 11 Celebrities Who Were Secretly Total Badasses.

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