8th Jun 2017, 7:59 pm | #41 | |
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Re: Museum of failure.
Quote:
Frank |
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8th Jun 2017, 8:17 pm | #42 |
Dekatron
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Re: Museum of failure.
Yes, and there was also "Super Audio CD" - a format which though capable of significantly extended response over classic CDs faded into obscurity in a couple of years because nobody released any meaningful content on the format and without content there was nothing to drive the purchase of players, so without a critical mass of players nobody released any content....
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8th Jun 2017, 8:54 pm | #43 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
Binatone shoulder-carried portable 45rpm record players.
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8th Jun 2017, 8:57 pm | #44 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
I like the suggestion of a nuisance watch.
Can we have it displayed on a waxwork of Gerald Ratner, please? David
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8th Jun 2017, 9:10 pm | #45 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
CP/M and Concurrent CP/M operating system is probably the ultimate example. MSDOS set the software industry back years.
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8th Jun 2017, 9:28 pm | #46 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
Any "alignment" of fuel molecules by an applied magnetic field would surely be undone, as soon as the fuel is forced through a tiny hole into a stream of fast-moving air .....
Anyway, there are plenty of apparent evolutionary blind alleys that later get revisited, and turn out to be more promising when looked at in a new light. Semiconductors existed before thermionic valves, but were of little use at the time. Even AC power distribution probably will be seen by future generations as a cul-de-sac, although there would never have been any electronics industry without it -- and hence no research that led to switched-mode power supplies that allowed DC to come into its own. CISC processors could also turn out to be going nowhere, if compilers can target the underlying microcode directly. And future generations will never understand how software vendors fought so hard to keep Source Code out of the hands of users -- surely that would have created chaos, benefitting only malicious hackers?
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8th Jun 2017, 10:17 pm | #47 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
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8th Jun 2017, 10:47 pm | #48 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
I suppose it's apposite to consider whether a failure is a genuine failure, or a failure due to misapplication or unrealistic expectations.
On a large scale, Brittannic, Olympic and Titanic. Also the Boulton Paul Defiant- utterly brilliant, but.... Closer to topic, perhaps, CD players in motor vehicles. I don't ever remember one that despite clever 'reading in advance' technology, actually worked consistently over bumps. It's just not technology that is suitable for the highways. (In my opinion) |
8th Jun 2017, 10:49 pm | #49 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
Well, what about... John F Kennedy...before this decade is out...Neil Armstrong, and safely back again?
T'is a pity that at the moment, the Americans have to cadge rides in to low-Eath orbit B
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8th Jun 2017, 10:53 pm | #50 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
Dats?
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8th Jun 2017, 10:58 pm | #51 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
I used to work at a company that repaired and refurbished those! They were crap, apparently they had a problem with some where something in the screen overheated and melted the case. The screens all had varying quality, some gave a horrible over-contrasted and stripy display. I only worked on them for a very short time.
Also at that workplace we worked on some early Philips mobile phones with colour screens, the screens were awful! The biggest failing being that instead of a backlight, they were lit from the front! You looked at the screen through a plastic thing that reflected the light to the screen which had horrizontal lines etched into it. We had to blow dust off them while fitting them with air-duster cans, but when using a fresh can of air it would squirt out a bit of liquid if you weren't careful, and this would get into the screen and ruin it, there was no way of cleaning them without damaging them! That type of display was very short lived, and I never saw another phone with that type of display. Regards, Lloyd |
8th Jun 2017, 11:09 pm | #52 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
Wankel engines. Especially in the NSU Ro80.
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8th Jun 2017, 11:39 pm | #53 |
Heptode
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Re: Museum of failure.
Betamax vs VHS was a race with one eventual winner and a runner up.
Compact Cassette vs DC international cassette (defined by a committee, built by, I think, Grundig and ITT), had a winner and a failure. |
9th Jun 2017, 12:21 am | #54 | |
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Re: Museum of failure.
Quote:
The Rimlock valve base was probably not a commercial failure for its proponents, given that such valves were quite widely used in British and European equipment. Rather, it was one of those developments, technically justified at the time as expanding upon the possibilities of the B7G base, but one that was quickly overtaken by events, namely the rather sudden arrival of the B9A base – even a surprise for some of the American valve makers. Philips adapted very quickly, and was amongst the first of the European valve makers to issue B9A valves. Quadraphonics was I think a failure, but one that happened slowly. Too many competing systems was one reason, but the concept was probably flawed. Cheers, |
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9th Jun 2017, 12:29 am | #55 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
* In the early 1990s GEC made a picture phone that needed to be used with another picture phone. I remember pairs of them being offered to the staff at the time, you could give one to for example your granny to talk to the grandchildren. I never saw one in use, but acquired the case of one for my kids used to play with that had been used to prepare the drawings of a registered design application. I still have it somewhere.
* The 100MB 3 1/2" floppy disk (not the ZIP disc which was at one time used extensively in some fields before USB drives came along: my son had to submit his course work on them in the early 2000's. ). Last edited by emeritus; 9th Jun 2017 at 12:38 am. |
9th Jun 2017, 12:41 am | #56 |
Octode
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Re: Museum of failure.
Commodore CDTV, Phillips CDI. at least the CDTV was basically just a comodore amiga500 in a black box. the CDI tho apart from a few titles it was a total flop.
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9th Jun 2017, 1:21 am | #57 |
Tetrode
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Re: Museum of failure.
The CueCat, solving a problem that didn't really exist and contributing to Radio Shack's demise.
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9th Jun 2017, 3:25 am | #58 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
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9th Jun 2017, 3:27 am | #59 |
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Re: Museum of failure.
One possible definition of faillure is a product that has been introduced to the market multiple times and never really took off.
Examples that come to mind are 3D TV (Thomson in the mid 1980's may have been the first to mass market) and any combination of the words Microsoft and Mobile Telephone in one sentence. |
9th Jun 2017, 3:33 am | #60 | |
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Re: Museum of failure.
Quote:
On the other hand, I would like to nominate the ESF and ERF picture tube series from Philips. They showed an extremely high occurence of cathode shorts and are as such an example of technical faillure. |
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