Museum of failure.

[Nuvistor]

I think any LED digital watch where a physical hand-operation was necessary to see the time would be a good contender. Technology for technology's sake.

I would normally agree but yesterday I was sat next to someone who when asked the time had to press a button on the "watch" to light the readout. It may have been more than watch, it was obviously new, but still not as easy as when I just need to look at my 49 year old wind up watch, still going strong. My watch is not an expensive one, I think £3 10s in 1968.
Frank

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by ThePillenwerfer

Wasn't there also another hi-definition type of DVD that wasn't Blueray?

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....

[russell_w_b]

Binatone shoulder-carried portable 45rpm record players.

[Radio Wrangler]

I like the suggestion of a nuisance watch.

Can we have it displayed on a waxwork of Gerald Ratner, please?


David

[PJL]

CP/M and Concurrent CP/M operating system is probably the ultimate example. MSDOS set the software industry back years.

[julie_m]

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?

[kalee20]

Originally Posted by MrBungle

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

So, R101 airship? While the R100 private jobbie worked fine.

Videodiscs took 3 major attempts to get them going... Baird's Phonovision; Philips's Laservision, until DVD's took off.

[The Philpott]

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)

[Bazz4CQJ]

Originally Posted by MrBungle

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

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

[Tractionist]

Dats?

[Lloyd 1985]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

And the Amstrad "Em@iler" phone-thingy.

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

[russell_w_b]

Wankel engines. Especially in the NSU Ro80.

[stuarth]

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.

[Synchrodyne]

Originally Posted by G8HQP Dave

Betamax was not a failure; it was just that in a two-horse race one had to come in second. The same might have happened with two rival CD standards, but fortunately Philips and Sony decided to cooperate.

Mazda octal base? Rimlock B8A base? (ducks and hides as 'incoming' expected!)

That’s a good point – the need to distinguish between outright failure and coming second. Betamax had a lifecycle of reasonable length and I expect provided an adequate return on its initial investment. On the other hand, Elcaset fell into the outright commercial failure category.

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,

[emeritus]

* 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. ).

[jay_oldstuff]

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.

[WilliamTK1974]

The CueCat, solving a problem that didn't really exist and contributing to Radio Shack's demise.

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by Station X

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

That may explain that some manufacturers still make paper capacitors, but it doesn't explain that Philips (Mullard) was one of the first to switch to polyester wherever possible.

[Maarten]

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.

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by Boater Sam

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

The later models, especially LG, were pretty slim, energy efficient and both Samsung and LG were quite cheap.

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.