Thicker teflon coatings have a tendency to delaminate. It’s a balancing act between small scratches and the whole layer peeling off in a sheet. There are things you can do to prepare the metal of the pan to support thicker teflon, but it’s difficult to differentiate the product and drives the cost up… generally up to the price point where the people paying that much opt for a completely different technology (e.g., silicone bakeware) or are snobby about non-stick pots and pans.
Hard-Anodized WearEver is a good product along these lines. Note: if you do scratch the teflon the pans will rust due to the surface prep to support the thicker teflon.
I’m convinced cast iron maintains because eventually, someone, somewhere will take soap water and a brillo pad to the pan you’ve lovingly conditioned over the years and then set it out to air dry.
Or as Zsofia points out, you must leave the bloodmetal in place to prevent reincarnation.
The manufacturing process of the original CorningWare put pretty strict limits on design. It didn’t break, but it was usually plain. The same can be said of the Corielle line. Something that meshes durability and aesthetics gets praise. The ugly casserole dish that refuses to break (you know, you’ve tried so you’d have a pretext to buy a nicer one) does not get the love.
I don’t know that at all. In fact, I say it’s simply not true for mass market technology.
First, start with your claim that light bulbs have a lifetime of about 1000 hours. The rating on a light bulb package is not the expected lifetime but more akin to MTBF, mean time between failures. That’s because the manufacture of a property thin and even filament in a properly evaluated thin glass bulb is subject to tiny variations. A small difference in thickness creates a hot spot that can lead to early failure. Some light bulbs will fail early; many will keep going for years of normal use. Saying 1000 hours as a lifetime is the same fallacy as claiming that people only lived to be 40 at the start of the last century. That was only true if you averaged in the high number of infant deaths. Those who got through adolescence successfully normally lived much past 40.
All incandescent light bulb technology is this trade off between heat, light, and lifetime. Thicker filaments will last longer, but also will give off less light. (See Long Life Light Bulbs.) Customers do have a choice in the matter, and the market chose more light as its default value. This is a rational decision exactly like the Beta/VCR choice.
You also haven’t given any proof that the rating on mass market light bulbs has stayed the same since the 1930s. Or that the standard wattage of consumer bulbs hasn’t increased since then. We need both of those figures to evaluate your claim, let alone give any credence to it.
It is rational for the manufacturer of a commodity product to minimize its spending on costly R&D and the costly retooling and retraining that accompanies any change in manufacturing procedures. This is part of the daily examination of expenditures that every business engages in.
Not what I said. Not spending large amounts of money for incremental advances is not the same as repressing technology. Not exploiting new technology isn’t the same as repressing it either. You keep thinking in terms of conspiracy instead of trade off decision making. Trade offs happen every day. Conspiracies not so often.
If this made any sense, then the makers of cast iron cookware would all be gone by now. I don’t care how tough the original Corningware was, it can’t be any tougher than cast iron.
Companies often sell off product lines, or subsidiaries to concentrate on their core business. I suspect this is what happened with Corning.
Rick, at the time that Corning ceased manufacturing CorningWare, the company was retrenching, and redefining its core business. IIRC this was in the late nineties, and it was getting clobbered on labor costs from overseas competition on its consumer goods.
Since then Corning has been focusing on more high-tech uses for glass, and especially fiber-optics. Here’s what Corning has to say about pyroceramics. Here’s a link to the current manufacturer of CorningWare products, and their version of the history. Which explicitly states that they are no longer using the pyroceramic base for the products.
Obviously the reasons for the change are not clearly stated - but I think that it’s simplest to believe that it is a response to the market: i.e. the old formulation wasn’t selling enough to make keeping the production lines profitable. Given that Corning is still using the pyroceramic for heated magnetic stirrers, it’s obvious that there are still uses where the durability and heat expansion characteristics are worth a premium, but that those uses are limited in scope, too.
I think that the comparison with cast iron isn’t a valid one: AIUI cast iron is relatively easy to make and work. Which translates, in manufacturing, to being a relatively cheap production line to keep in place. I have no reason to believe that pyroceramic is anywhere as simple to work with.
On the other hand, this thread has gotten me to look around on Ebay for the old stuff - my mom isn’t giving hers up and anyway it’s brown, good lord. After a while the “ew, grandma’s dishes” turns into “aww, just like grandma used to have”.
I understand profitability and trade offs in decision making. I’m not talking about conspiracy. I’m talking about a trade off and decision making. Namely, the decision to trade off a technology that might be better for the consumer for an inferior technology that remains more profitable.
I’m not trying to make a moral judgment call about evil cooperations, although at some point a decision that adversely affects the public for the sake of profit might be called immoral.
You might also note that this is in GQ not great GD so calling for cites isn’t necessary. You’ve given your opinion without any cites. Others are allowed to give theirs. I posted here hoping to get factual information. Opinions are welcome, but keep in mind it’s not a debate or with a winner and loser.
You are kidding, right? Calling for cites isn’t necessary in GQ? Seriously? We can go with opinions in GQ? In what universe? If you want to allow opinions, ask a mod to move this to GD. But that’s where I get off, because I want to give you factual answers.
You’re correct in that it’s not a debate. It’s a question with a factual answer.
The answer so far is a flat no.
You can make the case that you never used the word repressed, but reread your OP. It’s full of standard urban legends that have no other purpose than to tell tall tales of technologies the evil corporations repressed. Have it one way or the other.
Excuse me, the OP was quite harmlessly asking about technology that was discontinued or didn’t get marketed in the first place simply because there would be no profit from it. Why would you introduce artificial distinctions between “new” technology and “incrementally advanced” technology? Yes you were the first one here who mentioned conspiracy theories and total technological repression. There’s no need to disprove them with straw man arguments either. The exact statistical distribution around the mean value and the specific definitions of rated lifetime are totally irrelevant. And do you really expect me to provide statistics for every year from 1939 until today, only to prove the obvious, namely that 1) the technological level of lightbulbs, respectively the product value, got reduced at some point, for economic reasons, and 2) consumer choice was not an important enough factor to prevent the market from doing this?
Really? The market did choose its default value. People happily bought the pre-cartel lightbulbs, right until the “default” was changed, didn’t they? If people really preferred short-lived yet brighter bulbs, the market would have already provided them before the switch, yes? The “trade-off” argument equally works in both directions.
Obviously, a significantly longer lifetime presented a greater value than a slightly increased brightness. Lifetime vs. brightness changes with an exponential factor somewhere around the 8th to 12th power! The relation between lifetime and the number of replacement bulbs you’re forced to buy, however, is perfectly linear. Just consider this. The competitive pressure to sell a greater number of bulbs is a billion times higher than the pressure from costumers who want to buy longer-lasting bulbs. In which direction, do you suppose, will a free market move?
No, I clearly said I was looking for factual answers. I also noted that while you were calling for cites you weren’t giving any. Lots of posters including you, were sharing opinions rather than facts.
I used those as a reference point only. I asked you a specific question a few posts back when you were talking about cartels that were busted or fell apart. Care to answer?
You couldn’t possibly mean this question, could you?
I’ve answered that repeatedly. It is not correct. It’s never happened. Nobody has yet given a single example of it. No good technology ever gets suppressed. How many times must I say that?
Manufacturing, marketing and selling goods, especially consumer goods is not a trivial task. It may be that they were a massive hit, everyone who was interested in purchasing that type of product already did, and yet sales from the population growth; new colors or designs; new households from divorces, moves, transfers, etc.; etc.; weren’t enough. Nope, they needed to depend on breakage for the product line to be profitable.
I don’t buy this. One in ten of your customers would have to break and replace all of their products each and every year in order to make a 10% difference in sales. (Or 20% would have to break 50% of all their products, 40% would have to break 25%, 80% would have to break 12.5% of their products, yearly!) Cookware just doesn’t get replaced this often.
I was thinking of the EV but that’s only a guess as well. I realize there were other factors involved. My suggestion is that if a cartel could plan to hold back a lo cost superior light bulb to make more money on an inferior one then certainly it’s possible that other companies might do that with more significant technologies.
As far as this thread goes, no solid evidence or examples have been presented. I know customer preference, manufacturing costs, etc play a role and companies should be concerned about reasonable profit.
I’ve always felt that Airships/Zeppelins and Flying Boats are still viable forms of transport in some instances, especially where speed is not of the essence or for the ability to land on water because there are no runways.
Sadly, the last flying boat services were discontinued in the 1970s, but if I had the money/venture capital, I’d start a Flying Boat service in the Pacific Ocean, maybe based in Brisbane or Sydney…
The prefab housing today is much better and stronger than stick-built houses. Also, it can be built with much less waste than on-site built. People associate prefab with cheap-which is not the case today.
Actually, because energy is so expensive, this country needs energy efficient housing. prefab houses can be made much tighter and more efficient.
Local building codes are the culprit.
This may be a viable answer to the question - there are certain technologies that are discontinued or underused partly because of public prejudice. I think zeppelins would be great vehicles for, say, sightseeing, but could you take a trip and not punch out everybody who made a Hindenburg joke?
Some would also say that after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl the prejudice against nuclear power more than any practical concerns like waste disposal doomed US nuclear power programs.