A closer look
Inventor Thomas Edison obsessively tried to solve the affordable housing crisis in 1908 by patenting a massive cast-iron mold to pour entire, seamless concrete houses in a single day. Edison believed he could create indestructible, cheap homes complete with concrete bathtubs, concrete picture frames, and even concrete pianos, completely ignoring the fact that living in a giant grey bunker is incredibly depressing. The giant molds required over two thousand interlocking pieces, making the setup process so wildly complicated and expensive that building a normal wooden house was actually cheaper. Only a handful of these weird, monolithic structures were ever successfully built in New Jersey before his investors pulled the plug. It is comforting to know that tech billionaires enthusiastically pushing highly flawed, dystopian solutions for societal problems is a tradition that spans well over a century
