the Isolator (1925)

Enter the Isolator helmet. This curious invention from 1925 was brought to the world by Hugo Gernsback in that year’s July issue of Science and Invention magazine, and involved something akin to a diving helmet with an oxygen tank. But this wasn’t for deep sea exploration – this was for desk work!

The Isolator’s main purpose was to block out all the noise – all of the noise – from your surrounding environment, and narrow your field of view to only let you see the page in front of you. The idea was that this would improve your focus, but it may have been slightly overkill. Slightly.