This is the last part of the strange innovations series!

“Electric base-ball register” (John M. Humphreys, 1903)

Most baseball patents are simply oddities, little detours lost to history. John Humphreys’ idea, though, was straight out of a sci-fi novel. Just look at it:

Humphreys, like O’Neill before him, wanted to come up with a way to remove what he viewed as the game’s “great defect – when the umpire is often enabled to practically decide the game.”

Rather than anything so primitive as a bell in a base, though, he had a much grander idea: an entire electric signal system. His invention would include a series of circuits set up across the infield that would send electric currents whenever a fielder had caught a ball.

Unsurprisingly, Humphreys’ system was a bit too convoluted to ever gain widespread popularity.

Read more about the strangest inventions in baseball history in our previous publications.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4