Seems like the Theranos desktop blood analyzer would qualify here.
I had a dbx tape deck.
It was awesome, and much better than Dolby, but it was only useful for making dubs, since there was little if any pre-recorded media encoded with dbx.
Actually it’s interesting. I made the calculations and just taking into account the savings in energy and maintenance, throughout the whole 10-year life of the car the owner ends up paying less than with a normal car.
Yes, it was like buying a house and I will be tightening my belt for 5 years. But it is worth it.
Wouldn’t that fall straight into the realm of pure fraud, though? I understand that the OP asked for inventions that were honestly created but ended up being useless.
For me it’s a back scrubber.
Bought one, used it once and was underwhelmed. The only reason it still sets in my bath is because it looks nice with the rest of the décor.
Or you get this style of apple corer, if you don’t mind the apple being sectioned automatically. Having two kids under 5, the darn thing is a godsend to me. I wasn’t aware of this style of corer until I saw our daycare using it and thought … hmm … that seems useful. And it is. Just push down, and voila! Cored apple, cut into eighths.
I think that for quite a while it was viewed as a great idea that just needed a bit more development to really work. When this proved impossible, fraud took over.
Graham Kerr, “The Galloping Gpurmet”, called it a “Bombsight”, and highly recommended it.
This. Although I still don’t think Crazy Eyes gets that it wasn’t going work.
Quadraphonic sound. If stereo was good, then 4 channels would be twice as good! Except who had 4 speakers and could situate them such that you could hear all 4 distinctly. And nobody had 4 ears. And nothing was produced in quadraphonic.
The highly touted “Air Fryer.”
Takes up way too much space, basket doesn’t hold a family-sized meal, it gets HOT, and you have to stand over it and watch it so stuff doesn’t burn.
It’s got weird shaped innards that have to be washed by hand, and little nooks and crannies that don’t want to come clean.
And the food prepared in it is meh.
~VOW
Heh. I love mine. I keep it in a storage area in our basement along side my rice cooker, waffle maker, vacuum sealer, and big Le Creuset Dutch Ovens. Everything I’ve made in it so far has been a huge hit.
Remember the electric knife?
Ours lived in a drawer 364 days a year. It sliced the turkey on Thanksgiving.
Too much trouble plugging it in.
It had two blades that attached together with a rivet.
Ok. “Worthless” would be going to far, but I’ll nominate “face time.” In the old days, we all thought the phone of the future would have a picture as well as the sound. I think it was even featured in Tomorrow World at Disneyland. Now most of us have that feature and almost never use it.
There were records, and reel-to-reel and 8-track tapes issued in quadraphonic, but only a few releases, mostly issued by Columbia Records, IIRC.
It’s true, I only use mine once or twice a year. But I wouldn’t do without one. Slicing turkey in thin, uniform slices for sandwiches is beyond my skill without one.
Oooh - there are rich pickings in the kitchen.
I think I first saw a Ketchup Connector thirty years ago, and the damn things are still around. I never owned one (did anyone here?) but I was obsessed by the economics of them. The idea was that you connect the neck of your empty bottle (top) to that of the next bottle up (bottom) and the two cents worth of ketchup dregs from the old bottle drain into the new one.
I mean (setting aside hygiene), if it really is to cents worth then you would have to use the example above 620 times before you were in profit, and I would have to live to about 150 before it paid me back. I think that qualifies as “turned out to be worthless”.
j
i use my apple corer practically every day to “core” cupcakes for filling. it’s PERFECT for that application but, yeah, i don’t really ever use it for its intended purpose.
I think this may be generational… I -never- use facetime, ever. But my niece and nephew seem to use it for everything.
True enough, but the record companies quickly figured out that the hardware was going nowhere. Sort of like how software sells hardware, nobody is going to buy a system that doesn’t play their music any differently than what they currently have.