AzRaek, my age shows here. I call these modern devices headsets or earphones or Walkmans. When I think of headphones, I think of those bulky, ear-muff-shaped contraptions we used to use (in the 60’s and 70’s) in the privacy of our homes. I used to fall asleep with those accursed things on and wake up with hot ears.
Instead of DDT, why not just send people in under-developed countries instect repellant. Yeah, they’d smell bad, but the alternative is quite a bit worse.
Instead of DDT, why not just send people in under-developed countries insect repellant? Yeah, they’d smell bad, but the alternative is quite a bit worse.
How about the “Savannah,” the world’s first (and only) nuclear-powered cargo ship?
Painted white like the white elephant that it was, and anchored for many years in Mt Pleasant, SC as one of the ships in the Patriots’ Point naval museum.
Timothy Campbell-
I love my food dehydrator. I go camping alot, and dehydrated food makes up a significant part of the food I bring. BTW, homemade beef jerky is damn fine stuff.
You people are not on the fringe enough with this worst invention thing. Now here’s a few REALLY failed inventions of the 20th century:
The Edison Cement House - Invented by old Thomas Alva after buying the largest cement plant in the country in the turn of the century, the drab, cold, ugly buildings were poured into place with a set of molds that cost $175,000 in 1905!
Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion - A streamlined car in which the driver sat in the centre surrounded by windows with a periscope for rear view and ocean vessel-type steering. It was rear-ended during a test drive in 1933, killed the driver and seriously injured all passengers.
The Curtiss-Wright Air-Car - Basically a personal hovercraft. It was huge, noisy and next to impossible to steer or brake.
Paper Clothing - Popular in the '60s. I don’t think I need to go any farther with this one.
The Baby Bonder - Thought to be a revolutionary idea when it came out in the late '80s, this bib with two baby bottles in it was intended for men to ‘share the breast-feeding experience’. Readers of Bloom County will know how ridiculous the baby bonder really was.
Smell-o-Vision - Tried several times over the years with different methods including pumping the scents into the theatre through the air system and with scratch-‘n-sniff cards. Its most notorious use was in John Waters’ film, Polyesther.
Fallout Shelters - Like anyone would live through nuclear armageddon? Right.
And… I think New Coke was mentioned, but what about Crystal Pepsi? Not only a ridiculous idea in the first place: ‘it tastes just like Pepsi, but… IT’S CLEAR!’, it didn’t even live up to that promise, tasting more like an open Pepsi bottle that had been sitting on the counter for two or three days.
Sony, though, in my opinion, is the true king of failed 20th century inventions. They have invented:
Reel-to-reel video recording (which came out AFTER VHS and Beta, was only compatable with specially-fittend Trinitrons, was a big pain in the ass and only recorded one hour. Of course, my Dad was stupid enough to buy it.)
The Video Discman - A portable CD-Rom machine which played specialized Sony-only CD-Roms. It cost about $600 and had 4 or 5 titles such as a world atlas. Not a big seller.
The Videodisc/Laserdisc (developed with others) - Good idea, except for the limited amount of time per side, but it just never really caught on.
The Digital Audio Tape - This scared them so much, they invented all sorts of evil copy protection, but DATs are now for the most part only used by audio professionals and it’s even being phased out there.
There’s lots more, but I think you get the point.
On that note…
Is anyone familiar with the steel houses that were available through Sears in the 50s? There were 3 or 4 here in Knoxville, and I lived in one of them for about 5 months. It’s gone now. You can imagine how it felt in that metal box…to make matters worse, the floor was concrete. If I did live in one again, I’d be sure to collect refrigerator magnets for the walls.
Yugo
Automats
Susan B Anthony Dollar
Interbang
Esperanto(sp?)
Smell-o-Vision
Candy Cigarettes
so you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts. what’s so amazing about really deep thoughts? Tori Amos
Esperanto seems to be chugging along at a low level here in North America, but I suspect that it is much more popular overseas.
There was an Reuters article about it in the Saturday (6 December 1999) edition of the Toronto Star which stated that it had three million speakers, which puts it at the level of a sizable minority language.
What is “Interbang”?
As for “Smellovision”, they’re trying to bring it back again, via an accessory for your computer, a browser plugin, and special markup for web pages. It was in Wired a couple of months ago.
“Kiu frenezas? Cxu la mondo aux mi?”
Automats were not a failed invention. They merely became obsolete. In their day, Horn & Hardart’s were immensely popular and economical. And from what I understand the food was downright yummy. As with many other inventions, they were phased out in favor of similar ideas. Fast food restaurants are not that much different from the original automats.
I don’t think it’s fair to say they were failed inventions. You might as well say that buggy whips were failed inventions because they aren’t around anymore. Not true. They just aren’t as necessary or as popular.
The Dave-Guy
“since my daughter’s only half-Jewish, can she go in up to her knees?” J.H. Marx
Solar powered flashlights!
Couldn’t resist…actually, I probably could.
Hey, TennHippie (or anyone else who knows) what’s est? Is that an acronym for something, or just a word?
- Boris B, Hellacious Ornithologist
Re Esperanto: Wrong on both counts. Not only is two to six million speakers and a corpus of five hundred thousand works of literature, not to mention serious consideration as an auxiliary language by the EU, not indicative of a failure; it is also not a twentieth century invention, but a nineteenth. Domaghe!
How about the “pop rocks” …the small pieces of candy containing CO2 gas which was released when the candy was chewed. What fun that was. Taken out of the stores.never to be seen again…at least I haven’t seen them in years.
Here’s to those who wish us well…may all the rest go straight to hell
How about “pop candies” …little bits of candy rocks containing CO2 which was released when the candy was chewed? They were pulled off the shelves never to be seen again.( at least I didn’t see them since).
Quadrophonic? You mean, a specific encoding of four-channel sound, or the idea of more than two channels?
If you mean the encoding, then sure, many proposed standards for doing something die. But if you mean the idea of many-channel audio, then it’s alive and well. Almost all current sound cards support some sort of many-channel audio, as do DVDs/DVD Players and newer stereos.
Headphones? Not dead, just a niche market. I own them so I can drown out other sounds, so I don’t hear a distracting mix. Earphones are for the other end of that, where you want to hear the distractions, and are willing to sacrifice some quality.
DDT vs Insecticide: You think millions of cans of Off! would be better for the environment?
Paper Clothing: An idea a bit before its time. Paper, like throw-away gowns are made of, isn’t a nice clothing material, but the idea of garments as cheap as paper, from disposable materials, is getting closer. Imagine that future with custom designed clothing, dispensible in a minute from millions of vending machines… They just tried this before it was practical and they got all the drawbacks without the benefits.
Food dehydrators: Handy gadgets. If you like beef jerky and dried fruit, etc… I love that sort of food. But, I use screen stretched over an over rack, and put the oven on the lowest temperature. Probably wastes a lot of power by comparrision, but it works tolerably.
skelton, that explains why I saw Pop Rocks all over the place among the impulse items at the register at Target on Thursday evening. So much for that theory, huh?
“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather
How can you call them a “failed invention”? They are indespensible in the music industry, and many of us still use them at home, too. They give MUCH better sound quality.
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Teeming Millions: http://fathom.org/teemingmillions
“Meat flaps, yellow!” - DrainBead, naked co-ed Twister chat
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com
pld: I’ve seen pop rocks all over too. I guess they just don’t sell them in Assboink anymore.
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Teeming Millions: http://fathom.org/teemingmillions
“Meat flaps, yellow!” - DrainBead, naked co-ed Twister chat
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com
Arken, if your going to list the every other chapter of Rhino’s “Forgotten Fads and Fabulous Flops” Then the least you could do is give the proper credit.
Sure LaserDisc is quite dead, But VideoCD’s are still very much alive. Huge in Asia, where it is the format of choice, and a very popular choice with bootleggers of all stripe. For some legit ones you could try www.videocds.com
In general is it really needed to list models of cars that failed? I would think they don’t actually count as “invetions”
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Freelance Ne’er-do-well, Reasonable rates.
