Museum of failure.
 

Inspired by a news item on morning TV there has been a museum opened in Stockholm dedicated to failure and what we learn, needless to
say quite a few were technology based but also branding and marketing failures.

Keeping it to technology and particularly Radio and TV what would forum members nominate for our museum.

I will start with the Apple Newton and the Rabbit phone!!
Link http://museumoffailure.se/

Chris

Re: Museum of failure.
 

3D TV? Maybe putting that in a museum of failure would be premature, but that is probably where it will end up.

Videophones almost ended up there but I suppose Skype has now rescued the concept.

3G? It seems to be being replaced by 4G (and, soon, 5G) before it was fully rolled out and reliable while many people still rely on 2G which mostly works fine almost everywhere. You may not be interested to know that 15 years ago when doing a telecomms MSc we were asked to write about 3G; my conclusions were that it wasn't very good - the prof commented "I fear you may be right, but it will create lots of work for us".

Re: Museum of failure.
 

Possibly the most significant failure for this forum is the failure to prevent ingress of moisture into capacitors.

Peter

Re: Museum of failure.
 

They were probably only intended to have a life span of 10 to 20 years.

Re: Museum of failure.
 

Maybe put a Mazda CRM-121 in there!! I've got one they can have...

Or even my waterproof camcorder, that has liquid damage inside it!

Could even put me in there as an exhibit...

Regards,
Lloyd

Re: Museum of failure.
 

Sinclair C5

Re: Museum of failure.
 

Peter I suspect he moisture issue relates to material science and the better materials available now even if there not always used, another in the same vein would be rubber covered cables, superseded by the much longer lasting plastic and silicone.
The museums main focus seems to be those that bombed shortly after launch rather than those whose time has come to an end.
More Candidates for this could include, Amstrad GX4000 games console, Laserdisk, RCA VideoDisc, Nipkow disk, Scophony Television and BSB (British Satellite Broadcasting).

Chris

Re: Museum of failure.
 

ooh and Tantalum caps.

Re: Museum of failure.
 

If they were a failure they wouldn't still be made.

I know what you mean though!

Re: Museum of failure.
 

Graham, I suspect with Tants it is another case of the technology is OK its the implementation that is often flawed. So perhaps I should withdraw them from my list!
Chris

Re: Museum of failure.
 

New surface mount tantalum capacitors are pretty good. They desolder themselves and fall off the boards before they blow up :)

I nominate the "no brand clone tv games console" that caught fire when I was 6 years old and the associated crispy burn marks on the carpet that were there for 22 years after the event. The television, a Grundig "super colour" lasted another 5 years past the carpet did even if the remote control had a 3xAA holder glued to the back with hot snot for 20 of the final years of its life.

Re: Museum of failure.
 

How about plasma TV screens? Expensive, hard on the planet, power wasters, obese.

Re: Museum of failure.
 

I once saw a sale of water damaged raincoats. Fetrons were also a failure for technical & marketing reasons. The Iridium phone network also springs to mind, where finally one analyst said the only way to save any money from the debacle was to burn all of the satellites in low orbit. It is disturbing that I can think of so many examples off the cuff.

Re: Museum of failure.
 

Every government IT scheme ever devised.

Using animals in warfare. The " bat bomb's" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb and the Russian anti tank dogs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog . I also recall the US Navy had trouble with dolphins.

Windows Vista 8 and 10.

Andy.

Re: Museum of failure.
 

Prestel, Ionica, BSB.

Re: Museum of failure.
 

London tap water sold by Cocacola.

Re: Museum of failure.
 

Windows ME, and as already stated windows 8, windows 10 i wont say its rubbish, being an ex computer tech i find it quite easy to get along with.

Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast and i own both, it seems Sega fell on their own sword after the Megadrive.

Re: Museum of failure.
 

Betamax probably deserves to be there somewhere - though maybe mine has now made its own admission of the fact and refused even to power up when I tried it yesterday.

I must admit that the Sinclair C5, as mentioned earlier, immediately sprang to my mind while watching the item on the lunchtime news.

Re: Museum of failure.
 

What a fascinating museum idea - in promoting (esp. to kids) that success only happens, if it happens, at the end of a long run of (instructive) failures. It would be fascinating to curate this in terms of modes of failure - off the top of my head I can think of

* good ideas where something was missing at the time. The missing thing might very very often have been materials science. (Da Vinci helicopter, Sinclair C5, Brunel's atmospheric railway).

* bad copies of someone else's good idea, or whacky means of patent evasion that didn't work.

* things marketing men got really excited about, but no-one else did

* things complacent or under-funded large and venerable industrial concerns did shortly before disappearing for good (Ariel 3!)

Any more categories?

Re: Museum of failure.
 

Another category:

* Things built to a political schedule (Soviet TU-144)