We made it past the year 2000 without the machines rising up to kill us all.
And since we entered the 21st century, amazing technology has become entirely commonplace.
But we didn't arrive in the future without a few bumps in the road.
Case in point, there are no shortage of incredible innovations from yesterday that attempted
to usher in a world of tomorrow just a bit too soon.
Here are some revolutionary inventions that disappeared for the dumbest of reasons.
The Apple Newton falls on its head
In the early 1990s, sci-fi TV shows and movies showcased plenty of fancy future tech.
But no one really believed humans would be walking around with PADDs from Star Trek in
20 years.
And yet, today, you can buy a tiny computer that fits in your pocket and connects you
with anyone in the entire world — from Walgreens.
You know, the place where you buy cream for your weird foot thing.
But 17 years before they'd release the iPad, the innovators at Apple made their first attempt
at the tablet with the Newton MessagePad.
The device featured infrared technology and a whopping four megabytes of memory.
It also used an early touchscreen with a stylus to transfer handwritten notes directly into
useful data, letting users schedule appointments, send faxes, and also reminding them that they
were better off using an actual notebook.
"Hey Dolph, take a memo on your Newton: beat up Martin.”
“Bah!”
And that was the biggest problem.
For a system marketed as being a digital note-taker, the handwriting recognition software was straight-up
busted.
While later models improved on that feature, the damage was done.
It didn't take long for the Newton to be quietly discontinued and swept under the digital rug.
Intellivision gets played…by itself
For the 1979 release of the "Intelligent television" console, which was officially called the Intellivision,
Mattel pulled out all the stops.
The toymaker packed in 1456 bytes of RAM, a 2 megahertz processor, and 16-bit graphics
— all specs that were pretty impressive for the time.
Users could even "download" games via the PlayCable service, which was sort of an early
Xbox Live.
Players lucky enough to have rich parents could kick back and play brand spankin' new
games like Advanced Dungeons and Dragons or Q*bert.
Ah, yes — life for the Intellivision player was sweet.
Too bad the Intellivision was cursed with several fatal flaws, most notably its impressively
terrible controllers.
After a few years on the market, '80s gamers decided they weren't too impressed.
As the early video game market plummeted — now dramatically known as The North American video
game crash of 1983 — it pulled Intellivision down with it.
Despite its shortcomings, the Intellivision still influenced countless home gaming devices
and enjoys a cult status among nostalgia gamers.
And cranky old guys who hate new stuff. Ah come on, you know who you are.
Nintendo?
Heh, more like NintenDON’T!
The flight of the Concorde underwhelms
The Concorde was born during an era of flight-based optimism, when rockets were headed to the
Moon and everyone felt a little groovier about supersonic flight.
Product of a joint venture between Britain and France, the supersonic commercial airliner
first took to the skies in 1969, then ferried its first paying passengers across the sound
barrier in 1976.
After a 40 year career, the Concorde is gone, having taken its final flight in 2003.
But why?
Well, catching a lift on the sound barrier-breaking jet ran about $7,000, with round trips a bargain
rate at ten-grand.
Reaching those near-1,400 mile-per-hour cruising speeds also caused wall-rattling sonic booms,
which handily succeeded at pissing off every neighbor for at least a hundred miles.
“Oooh.”
That's not all: the Concorde was highly inefficient, sucking over 100 tons of fuel for just one
flight between London and New York.
Stack that up against a massive 777 plane, which burns half that fuel per transatlantic
flight.
Worst of all, in July 2000, an Air France Concorde flight crashed and killed over 100
people.
All those factors put the plane permanently out of commission shortly afterward.
LaserDisc barely scratches the video market
The LaserDisc is the ultimate example of a would-be revolutionary format.
Initially developed by MCA and Philips, the first movie released in the United States
on LaserDisc was Jaws in 1978.
(Dun-Dun) The 12-inch silver platters offered better
resolution than standard VHS tapes and were initially much cheaper to make.
The medium also allowed for precise playback options, giving viewers a crisp fast-forward,
fast-reverse, fairly seamless pauses, and watchable slow-mo options — likely leading
to a few conversations starting with "son, why does my Basic Instinct disc start to skip
when Sharon Stone is about to be interrogated?"
“It’s nice.”
But for all its benefits, LaserDisc did have some serious drawbacks.
For one thing, it cost a ton of money just to buy the player.
At first, LaserDisc players started at $800 — compared to $200 VCRs at the time.
Higher-end models ran into the thousands.
And many movies couldn't fit on a single side, forcing viewers to flip the disc at least
once during playback, if not swap out discs entirely.
"But wait!
It gets worse!"
Early LaserDiscs also suffered from "laser rot" — a condition that sounds a lot like
a futuristic STD — and which caused discs to skip and lag.
It also didn't help that the discs were bulky and fragile.
But more than anything else, the main problem with LaserDiscs was that US distributors never
really embraced them, limiting the available titles.
Most importantly, they didn't record anything, giving VHS tapes a distinct and apparently
unbeatable advantage.
Ultimately, it was the ability for your older brother to record dirty movies late at night
that pretty much killed the LaserDisc.
"Andy for the last time, I don’t want your giant box of pornography!"
“No, no no, come on, man!
So uncool!”
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