I used to believe that if I could get a huge diamond which I could place on top of a thick flashlight, I could create one of those cool, powerful lasers they showed all the time in cartoons.

Andres Cabezas

I didn't quite get the concept of mechanical printing as a kid. I figured whoever wrote books must have been quite exacting and meticulous with his pencil to make all the little letters perfect and regular.

Brendan

someone once managed to convince me that there was such as thing as a sand magnet. i had been to the beach one day and was complaining about the sand in my shoes. he said "what you need, is a sand magnet"
"what?" i replied. so he told me
"you know that sand makes silicone, and silicone makes glass? well how d'u think men carry those big panes of glass across roads? they use a glass/sand magnet"
he almost managed to convince me that i could pick one up from a D.I.Y store.
thank god i didnt attempt to buy one...i might have looked a little silly. sad thing is...the person who told me this was a boyfriend, and it was only about 2 yrs ago....i'm 20 now!

jen

I used to believe that I could record sound with seashells. I tried recording the Pastor at my parent's church when I was a kid. I tried several times, and finally gave up, dissapointed it wouldn't work. It captured the ocean's sounds, after all!

Teala

I used to think that when you send a fax, the actual paper that you put in the fax machine goes through the plug to the other place you're sending it to and comes out there

Anon

1) I was about 10 in 1980 and worried frequently about nuclear war with the USSR. I didnt understand how it worked and somehow concoted this theory that our country and the USSR had buried wires that ran all the way through the Earth to just underneath the other country. If one wanted nuclear war you just push a button and poof! that country vaporizes.
2) One girlfriend I had didn't understand how the space shuttle left the Earth's atmosphere b/c she thought the Earth was surrounded by some sort of glass-like window. She was 25! My current girlfriend confessed to me that when she first immigrated to the US from Vietnam she saw her first vending machine in the airport. When she saw someone use it and get change she figured there must be a midget inside to couint the money. She was 18!

Ryan

I used to believe that telegraphs worked by pulling on a cable and the person on the other end would be able to feel when it was pulled. I figured that to send a message a really long distance you had to pull really hard, but could never work out how someone would have enough strength to pull the cable hard enough to send a message overseas.

Claire

At the time i was in like, kindergarten. one day one of my feriends told me that somehow, watches got powered by sucking the power out of diamonds. i was amazed at this fact until about 8 years old saw my dad replacing a battery from his watch.

Anon

I used to believe that somone used to have to go round and switch all the cats eyes on at night time, it was only when I got older I realised it was the cars headlights reflection that lit them up as they travelled along!

Tracy

My sister thought that she could video me by simply inserting the VHS tape into the VCR sideways.

Anon

I used to believe that I could make a laser by putting more batteries in a flash light.

Tyler

when i was about ten or eleven i would go on chats a lot to talk with friends. i knew people can see you sometimes cause i had watched my mom chatting before, but i didnt understand that you had to have a webcam in order to do that. so everytime i would chat, i would dress up my best and make sure i didnt do anything to embarrass myself and i would sit next to my barbies so all the girls would think i was "cool" for having so many.

[ichi-chan(loves)kara]

i used to think technology was "flying cars" and that we would have them by the year 2000.

josieg

Yay, I am so delighted to find out that I am not the only idiot that thought a piece of paper went in to the fax, de-materialised (like on Star Trek) and re formed again at the other end. Mind you, this was back in the 60's when I first saw a fax on a TV show. The cops were sending an identikit picture of a criminal to another state - I was convinced that it was only a matter of time before people would travel this way!!

Lee

I used to believe that a calculator has a mind of it's own and knows what you're going to do next and sits there waiting, bored, for you to input the figures. Then when you do the same kind of calculation again it cynically thinks "oh here we go again, la-di-da, b-o-r-i-n-g".

Jason

The Fast Forward button on a cassette recorder is often marked simply “F.F.” for Fast Forward. I used to think that was the button you pressed to make it go “F-F-F-F-F-F” (which it is, of course, but that’s not what it means!).

Alan, Sheffield

when i was little, i liked to watch my dad get ready in the mornings because he always prickled me with his day's growth of stubble. one morning while he was shaving, he "plugged" the electric plug into my upper arm, and pressed the battery button. the shaver worked, and i thought i was getting electrified. later that day at the grocery store, my mom noticed my anxious face and asked me what was wrong. i cried, and told her that my arm had been feeling numb all day.

my dad got yelled at after they laughed at me, but i needed a few more demonstrations before i tearfully agreed that my arm was in no serious danger of falling off.

Anon

Once when I was six my computer wasn't working propalely and my dad said it had computer virus. Then I got really worried because I thought I might catch the virus off it and freeze up. It wasn't 'til a couple of years later that I found out you can't catch a virus from computer.

Helena

I believed that I had invented reef knots.

Phil

My music teacher once said that music in an electrical piano was made by little tiny men that lived inside it.

Anon