You were a few centuries late - google Opharion, a variety of lute that had multi-scale (or Fanned Fret, if you want to use the Novax Patent Speak) fretboard. Very little exists in lutherie that hasn't been tried before. Heck, adjustable bolt-on necks (ie, adjust the angle under full string tension) appeared in various forms (Stauffer, Larson) before the turn of the previous century, and now the acoustic guitar world is going 'look! New techology! EMBRACE ME!'.
There's a company out there that does a compound 'twisted' neck that rotates along the same shape your hand does when it moves up the board. Not sure if they're combined it with fanned frets as well.
Some crazy folks have invented a bass that converts from fretted to fretless at the flip of a lever. And banjos have had 'built in' capos (for the 5th string, at least) for a very long time indeed.
For the record, I think all the 'alternate fret marker ideas' are fairly pointless, because by definition the guitar is an instrument with multiple potential tunings, and I use capos a lot, so....just learn to play without the dots, checkerboards, whatever. It's also not a piano - there's no '1 note, 1 key' concept, which is what makes it a little more complicated to sight-read non-chorded music on guitar (at least, that's what I found. Mastery is a different issue).
The last bit is called a 'slide', and 'fretless instruments', and are older than fretted instruments by far.
As for alternate temperament fretboards, again, a company came out with (and possibly still makes) swappable fretboards with a variety temerament tunings, with micro-fret placements. There are articles on the topic in some of the older (volumes 1 and 2, I think) Big Red Books, which means about 20-30 years ago at least.
Yeah. In the 1970's. Modern version's been implemented in Gibson's Robot Guitar, but Jimmy Page was using this decades ago.
Erik: now that's nifty!