What if the US Army Corps of Engineers had developed “soft infrastructures” and “living systems” for dealing with the changing flows of the Mississippi in and around New Orleans? What if Henry Ford had used soy protein for automotive parts and synthetic meats in the 1940s? Or what if South Asian nation states had adopted the Ganges Water Machine model in the 1970s to address critical water shortages in urban areas? What do these three, seemingly disparate examples all have in common? Each is based on a patent or series of patents that were never adopted for one reason or another. This course is structured in three parts. First, we examine different techniques of conducting historical research using patents. Second, each week we read a primary and secondary texts as well as closely examine a specific patent related to the texts. We collectively hallucinate on what might have been had this patent been adopted. Third, in consultation with the instructor, participants choose a particular patent that they study carefully throughout the term and imagining what a city, a landscape, a block, or even an entire region might have looked like had such a patent been adopted. We carefully study why this particular patent was said to fail.