3M, the Scotch tape company, had some financial success with board games for awhile.
Nintendo, the company, started years before it developed the Famicom.
Not a good example-but there used to be a hightech printer mfg. in New Hampshire (“Printronics”?)-they made the first high speed line printers. They got out of the business when margins got thin…and went into making kitchen utensils.
I don’t know if they are still in business.
That would be Centronics. Today they are most famous for the parallel port that was used for connecting printers until USB became universal. But Centronics sold the printer division to GENICOM and bought EKCO, a housewares manufacturer.
The more interesting bit of diversification would be iTunes. Apple parlayed their new consumer electronics offerings into total domination of another industry.
In their settlement with the Beatles’ Apple Records in the early 80s, it was agreed that Apple could continue to use the Apple name, but would not enter into the music business. Fast forward to today, and Apple is the largest music retailer in the world. They now fully own the trademark, after paying Apple Records off to the tune of a cool $500m. Now, Apple Records pays Apple for the rights to use the name.
And Adcock’s work was based on the work of Kenneth Wood at Westinghouse, which was built on work done at Ampex and other places. Nobody invented digital imaging out of thin air. As with every other notable innovation, it’s a progression of scientific advancements in small steps.
Frankly, the path from Sasson’s prototype to the first consumer digital cameras in the mid-1990s require a lot more innovation, some of which took place at Kodak and some of which did not.
The relevant point here, I think, is Kodak’s failure to commercialize their technology. Despite all of their great research, they’ve struggled at creating consumer products for decades. That’s the root cause of their troubles today.
As long as we’re gumming up the works…
Thomas Adams was an inventor. He dabbled in many things, primarily glass sales and photography. In 1869, he encountered Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, former dictator of Mexico, who was then living in exile in New York. Santa Anna was trying to sell chicle as a replacement for rubber. Adams bought some from him, experimented with it in a variety of ways and gave up his camera to kickstart the chewing gum industry in the USA in 1871.
Reference caught.
Not just a trapping and trading company. It had the rights to the entire watershed of Hudson’s Bay (an area of 3.9 million square kilometres), which made it a larger landlord than many European countries. It ceded the territory to the UK in 1713, and the territory eventually became part of Canada and the USA.
The retail stores started as operations to supply the fur traders.
Oh, we still have some “3M Bookshelf Games”, and I hadn’t thought of them as an example. And I’m guessing 3M made some changes even before that.
Since 3M stands for “Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing”.
Lamborghini started life making tractors.