Museum of failure.

[AC/HL]

If you Google gas fridge there are many domestic ones. They're not cheap, which is probably why you don't see many in towns & cities. I seem to remember our gas fridge being an Electrolux, which amused me.

[AidanLunn]

Philips Charley deck VCRs.

[HamishBoxer]

I used to have a 3 way fridge in my caravan,12Volt/Mains and LPG.

[emeritus]

We had one of those in our old motor caravan. Very effective: once when we went on a break in November, we didn't change its temperature setting, and it froze a bottle of semi-skimmed milk solid. The leisure range Electrolux fridges have plumbing which has a greater inclination than the usual domestic type to allow for the fact that they might not be precisely level when parked.

[Tractionist]

Another big favourite [I like them and have one!] - the Hoover 'Constellation' vacuum cleaner! Pink and grey, looks like 'Sputnik 1' ...... even the carry handle features a 'stabilising tail fin' .................. FLOATS ON A CUSHION OF AIR [i.e. no wheels or castors etc.] !!!!!!!!

It works quite well - if a bit under-powered by modern standards. But it didn't catch on .... no other manufacturer made a similar model .... and similarly so Hoover. It was ultimately [quite quickly] discontinued.

Because 'the exhaust of this neo hovercraft' was aimed downwards at the floor ..... they were very very quiet and produced no more than a subdued 'hum'. (of course this arrangement did not permit the attachment of the full array of the usual useless implements e.g. paint sprayers / insect sprayers etc. etc.).

[Andrew2]

Ha! Those Constellation ads were on TV when I were a lad and I thought they were like something off The Jetsons! I badgered my mum to get one but of course like most other folk at the time we couldn't afford one so we soldiered on with our old Goblin cylinder.

[Tractionist]

You were 'mad for it' eh? Your Mum was [hopefully still is] a very sensible woman - Goblin stuff was always good.

[Tractionist]

The Hoover 'Keymatic' washing machine! Used a huge multi-faceted Bakelite or plastic 'key' in order to select each wash programme. This key was introduced into a front slot in a particular direction/side/orientation in order to operate that specific programme. Seemingly knobs were deemed inadequate by Hoover.

Naturally this never caught on - and competitors never copied it [presumably too many users got fed-up of losing {the huge / saucer-sized} 'key']!!

[Station X]

My parents had a Keymatic. From what I remember it was one of the first front loading washer/dryers. The door folded down to form a shelf. My mother loved it as she could do something else while it got on with the job.

The machine it replaced had a gas heater and a wringer. We skipped the twin tub stage.

[ms660]

Originally Posted by Tractionist

The Hoover 'Keymatic' washing machine! Used a huge multi-faceted Bakelite or plastic 'key' in order to select each wash programme. This key was introduced into a front slot in a particular direction/side/orientation in order to operate that specific programme. Seemingly knobs were deemed inadequate by Hoover.

Naturally this never caught on - and competitors never copied it [presumably too many users got fed-up of losing {the huge / saucer-sized} 'key']!!

They caught on in the North West, I helped to deliver quite a lot of them...Made from 1961 to 1980 so far as I can make out:

http://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-b...READ.cgi?39356

Lawrence.

[Andrew2]

We flogged them in the early 70's. I think we got them re-furbed from somewhere, but they always seemd to be missing the key! The keys were maroon or dark red IIRC? The washers were darned heavy, I could delver a Hoover or Hotpoint twin-tub on my own, but it took two of us to do a Keymatic!

[ms660]

So far as I can make out the Hoover Constellation was produced in the UK for nearly 20 years and ceased production in 1975, so maybe not a failure.

Lawrence.

[Tractionist]

Assuming that you're correct Lawrence [and I'm surprised about manufacturing duration[s] - but have no reason to doubt you] .... one has to concede that both the Constellation and the Keymatic were quite functional machines. They did the job and I don't recall a deluge of consumer complaints etc. It's just .......... that the 'concept[s]' never really caught on and endured i.e. up until 2017.

[Refugee]

The Bendix LT dryer we had in the 1960s after my dad got a well paid job while my mother was pregnant with my little sister plus a still born.
It was in all the anticipation that we got this huge posh washer dryer with a full service contract and we needed it.
It got the belt slipping off mod and then the sock eating mod.
That service contract must have cost them an absolute fortune.
As a 5 year old I could see that the pulley had no flange on it for a reason unknown.
When I got old enough it had two two-speed semiautomatic gearbox rebuilds by me plus what it had on contract and lots of other repairs following all the usual pops and bangs. I got good at reading the microfish screens in short order down at the parts department in Wembley.
It used to warn you when it was about to go for a walk by throwing open the top loading soap dispenser before leaping into action.
My mother only got rid of it after I left home in the mid 1980s.
The Bosch 6 series machine we now have weighs in almost as heavy as the Bendix LT drier but it is the first machine we have ever seen that has never walked when off balance.

[Reelman]

Just to return to instant cameras for a moment. I believe that Kodak thought they were safe re patents infringement because their film used vegetable dies and Polaroid used mineral ones as well as technically different mechanics. Was not to be of course and Kodak eventually lost the case. They were forced to offer a minimum of £10 to every customer who had bought a camera (certainly not the full price) dependant on model. I certainly eagerly hunted out the cameras at boot sales in the early 80s to make a few quid. However when I tried to send off the last EK4 I found I discovered that Kodak had finished the scheme and were no longer paying out.... Doh!

Incidentally the prints from the Kodak system taken in the 70s have lasted far better than the Polaroid ones. Before Kodak introduced their own system they actually made the Polaroid films for Polaroid.

Peter.

[emeritus]

Well, the managers may have thought that the technical differences were sufficient to distinguish Kodak's system from Polaroids patent claims, but I had it from the mouth of one of those personally involved in analysing Polaroid's patent portfolio and the potential dangers it represented, that Kodak's in-house Patent Attorneys did not. The use of different materials is not necessarily sufficient to avoid patent claims, which (if the patent attorney has done his job properly) generally cover a much wider scope than the particular arrangements described in the patent.

[Andrew2]

Originally Posted by Reelman

Incidentally the prints from the Kodak system taken in the 70s have lasted far better than the Polaroid ones. Before Kodak introduced their own system they actually made the Polaroid films for Polaroid.

Indeed. I have (or had) a handful of Polaroid snaps taken in the early/mid 70's and they have all gone to a dark brown/red tint with white 'dandruff' specks all over them. I spent ages with Photoshop so I could use them on my website.
They came up surprisingly well, all things considered.

[Lucien Nunes]

It's easy to lambast Sinclair products as they were often subject to severe (and perhaps misjudged) compromises in pursuit of miniaturisation and attractive pricing, which did not coincide happily in the earlier days of S/S. Such is the price of innovation at consumer level. But has anyone mentioned the X-10 yet? The supposedly 10W PWM audio amplifier that couldn't output anything like 10W. Although the class-D concept is sound and widely used today, the X-10 did not have the necessary refinements for reliable, stable, linear operation, as Sinclair value-engineered it down from Gordon Edge's basically workable design. It badly underperformed its specs and I believe gave off horrible RF interference, until the substandard transistors expired.

[greg_simons]

Originally Posted by AidanLunn

Philips Charley deck VCRs.

The philips c-deck can't be considered a failure, they sold thousands of them and i became quite an expert on them, yes they were delicate and the pinch roller rubber quickly succumbed to the liquid based head cleaners that were popular at the time but they worked well enough, perhaps even better than some of the competition.
Greg.

[hamid_1]

Whilst we've been talking about photographic technology failures, perhaps I should mention the Advanced Photo System film and cameras. Introduced in the mid 1990s, they were supposed to have been the camera technology of the future, but launched when digital cameras were just beginning to appear. The first digital cameras, as already mentioned, were expensive and not great quality, but soon improved in leaps and bounds. Despite the shortcomings of early digital cameras, people loved the idea of being able to see your pictures instantly, and being able to share them in new ways, such as on the internet. Film cameras, on the other hand, were seen as old technology, and sales plummeted. The Advanced Photo System quietly disappeared, though traditional 35mm film continued to be used by professional photographers for some time. The APS cameras were not considered good enough for professional use.

In a similar way, the disc film camera flopped a decade earlier. The disc camera was designed to be smaller and simpler to use, but the pictures were low quality due to the small size of the negatives, and with only 15 pictures per disc, customers found it poor value for money.

There are lots of similar failures, like the Digital Compact Cassette and D-VHS, which were seen as an extension of an old technology, not really new enough to be worth buying.

I'm glad someone mentioned the Rabbit portable telephone earlier. Another spectacular flop. It seemed like a nice idea: you could use the handset at home or in the office with a base station just like any other cordless phone. You could also take the phone with you and use it to make (but not receive) calls at public telepoints. However, it appeared around the same time as real mobile phones were becoming established. The Rabbit phone lost its advantage - not that it really had much of an advantage anyway. The public Rabbit Telepoints where you could use the phone were usually found at places like shopping centres and railway stations - places where you could usually find a payphone nearby - so there was no real need for the Rabbit. The company behind the Rabbit, Hutchison Telecom, went on to launch the successful Orange mobile phone network. At least they learned from their failure.
(Actually I had a Rabbit phone with the home base station, acquired cheaply long after the telepoint service finished. It worked very well as a cordless phone for a few years, then died. It just said LINK followed by ERROR on the display when you tried to make a call. I think I still have the Rabbit base and handset somewhere...)