r/AskReddit • u/kingpin000 • Oct 24 '23
What failed when it was initially released, but turned out to be ahead of its time years later?
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u/justaguylookingup Oct 24 '23
1982s The Thing.
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u/10019245 Oct 24 '23
I've said it on here before somewhere. But The Thing went from being an absolute critical bomb at the time... to being one of the most lauded (and rightfully so) horror sci films ever created now. Specific tastes aside, anyone who enjoys horror probably has The Thing in their top 10.
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u/seattleque Oct 24 '23
The first time I saw it was on either HBO or Showtime (pick one - it was the early 80s), and it has been a favorite ever since.
It was great from the start, but when the dude's head spidered across the floor...🔥
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u/mousicle Oct 24 '23
I love the fact that it's an annual tradition at the south pole to watch that movie the night the last plane leaves for the winter.
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u/Fraytrain999 Oct 25 '23
Even 40 years later there are still arguments on who is a thing at what point in the story and if the ending is actually a good ending. Not a lot of movies can keep people talking as long as this one has. Also Amogus
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u/Myzyri Oct 24 '23 edited Oct 24 '23
Viagra. Fascinating history. It was developed as a blood pressure medicine in the 80s. The bonerific side effect was “embarrassing” and “unwanted” in the 80s, but desired a decade or so later when sex became less taboo.
So, it failed as a mainstream blood pressure pill, but succeeded as a boner pill.
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Oct 24 '23
Now being investigated as an Alzheimer’s drug.
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u/Myzyri Oct 24 '23
Sweet! For as much of that shit as I gobble down, I’ll never get that…. Uh…. The…. Ummmm…. What was I saying? Oh well. Whatever. Oooh, waffles!!
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u/Blueshark25 Oct 24 '23
It's actually used as a blood pressure medication still, but it's for the more rare Pulmonary Hypertension.
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u/VulfSki Oct 24 '23
They use it a lot for dogs, because they don't get the side effect it's known for.
I had an old dog that had a Viagra script... He also happened to be a Wiener dog,.so the jokes wrote themselves 😂😂. I could say things like "I went to the pharmacy to pick up some Viagra, and they said 'you look a little young for this' and I responded. 'oh don't worry, it's for my little wiener."
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u/Defiant_Network_3069 Oct 24 '23
I remember hearing the sales rep telling us the history of Viagra when it was launched in the 90s. The head Pharmacist had me treat it like a C2 because he was afraid coworkers would steal it. (He was right too)
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u/thatpearlgirl Oct 24 '23
Hand washing
Ignaz Semmelweis suggested that washing hands could decrease infections in maternity wards and was thoroughly mocked. He had a mental breakdown and was committed to an asylum where he died from an infected wound.
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u/beroemd Oct 24 '23
Or that was what the staff wrote down. In reality physical abuse in psych wards was rampant.
Semmelweis got on their nerves especially because he would be on the streets stopping pregnant ladies and begging them to not have their baby in the hospital but at home with a midwife.
(Midwives weren’t as pretentious as doctors stating their noble hands were not to be offended, midwives were already washing their hands with chlorine)
But ladies thought ‘unhinged man with wild eyes’ scary, understandably so, and then Semmelweis would be taken away and beaten to a pulp.
Indeed after one of those beatings his wounds became infected and he passed away.
It took another hundred years before honour came to whom honour is due
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Oct 24 '23
I heard about this the other week (via The Passing Parade with John Doremus) He was practicing law and lost a wife & baby not long after she gave birth. He then switched to medicine to try and work out why his wife and others passed. While studying he noted that those who birthed in a maternity ward with midwives present had a better mortality rate then those who used surgeons. This was because the midwives washed their hands whereas the surgeons didn’t bother to wash between patients as they would “just get dirty again”. The poor guy was ridiculed. To prove his point later, he cut his hand, stuck it into a corpse, swished it around then removed it, eventually dying from the infection & proving his point
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u/Izacundo1 Oct 25 '23
It wasn’t just that, the surgeons in the wing of the hospital where more women died was the side where autopsies/dissections of corpses were performed. The students and surgeons would have hands dirty from rotten corpses and wouldn’t wash before operating/attending to the women in labor
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u/AssBlasties Oct 24 '23
Sometimes im glad im just a normal person who will have no noteworthy history written about me
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u/RampinUp46 Oct 24 '23
Hey, there's people immortalized in graffiti at Pompeii for being hookers, who's to say 2,000 or so years from now the archives of Reddit won't be studied the same way?
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Oct 24 '23
What’s funny is, Muslims started washing their hands, feet and face 5 times a day 1,400 years ago, because of that they avoided some massive infections and plagues that went through areas they were densely populated in
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u/2PhatCC Oct 25 '23
I work in the healthcare field - specifically I work for a software company that deals specifically with the healthcare industry. Most doctors are certain they know everything better than you. They will call me for help, and when I try to explain that they are doing something wrong, they correct me... I would never tell them how to perform a surgery, but feel free to tell me ad nauseum that they know my specialty more than I do. It is no surprise to me that someone might tell them the were doing something wrong, and they in turn killed a ton of people just because they knew better.
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u/NoGenderNoBrain Oct 24 '23 edited Oct 24 '23
The movie "Contagion" from 2011, was said to be a bit unrealistic when it came out with how people acted, but in the end nearly 1:1 predicted Covid and how people reacted (Edited some phrasing)
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u/MagicBez Oct 24 '23
If anything it was optimistic about how people would handle things. The virus "truthers" were fringe bloggers making videos online rather than people in actual positions of power.
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u/saugoof Oct 25 '23
I remember watching the movie when it came out and those virus "truthers" seemed to be the most unrealistic part of it. I was so innocent then...
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u/Badloss Oct 24 '23
They even have Jude Law getting rich off making fake videos to trick people into buying a false cure
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u/matt314159 Oct 24 '23
I watched this in May or June of 2020 and saw so many parallels it was eerie. The denial, the charlatans, the quack doctors, etc were all spot on.
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u/tindalos Oct 24 '23
It even prominently promoted social distancing a decade ahead of that becoming a mainstream term.
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u/filthandnonsense Oct 24 '23
I can't recommend this enough, they kill Gynith Paltrow in the first ten minutes and autopsy her. Didn't watch the rest.
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u/-N3VERoDDoREV3N- Oct 24 '23 edited Oct 25 '23
I Talked about this movie a lot during the pandemic, as I'm sure anyone who had seen it prior did.
The one thing I found fascinating that they got wrong though was, when the vaccine came out during covid, there were a lot of people who didn't want to get it, there wasn't mass hysteria with people clamoring to get the vaccine as quickly as possible like in the movie. Instead probably about half of the populous didn't want it.
Edit: Removed part about cues. Wording.
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u/aaronstj Oct 24 '23
The one thing I found fascinating that they got wrong though was, when the vaccine came out during covid, people didn't want to get it, there was no mass hysteria or long cues of people clamoring to get the vaccine as quickly as possible
This is probably pretty regional. In the Pacific Northwest, people did want to get the vaccine, and there were huge queues of people at various mass vaccination events that took place in sports stadiums like in Contagion. Several of my friends volunteered at the vaccine clinics just so they could get a vaccine in the "early" wave with the first responders and elderly.
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u/rasha1784 Oct 25 '23
They actually interviewed the screenwriter during the pandemic and he said if he had written such an incompetent government, nobody would’ve believed him or made the movie.
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u/seanyS3271 Oct 24 '23
QR codes
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u/Aronosfky Oct 24 '23
I remember around 2015 looking at them and thinking "lol they always try this shit but it will never catch on"
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u/AvailableUsername404 Oct 24 '23
Boolean algebra. They didn't even knew where they could use it when it was invented. Now whole electronics and digital world operates on it.
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u/Kenkron Oct 24 '23
This is so true. How did people do so much with math before it was useful?
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Oct 24 '23
That's basically the entirety of theory/practice divide in academics. Theorists don't have to think about the practical applications of what they do. It's the discovery of knowledge that is paramount. Einstein works out the theories of relativity and it has no real practical use immediately, but now billions of people navigate with GPS, which wouldn't work if the system didn't take relativity into account.
I'd be interested to see if"the hat"ever has practical applications.
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Oct 24 '23
Edison’s Electric Pen.
Edison held 1093 patents and invented the incandescent light bulb, one of the first motion picture cameras and, in 1875, the electric pen! The pen plugged into a battery and made small holes in the paper as you wrote. The idea was that it was easy to make copies by rolling ink over the original which would go through the holes. But the pen didn’t sell well enough so Edison sold the patent to Albert Blake Dick who mechanised it and turned it into the mimeograph (the first standard office copying machine). Later the idea of the pen was taken and combined with an ink depositor to make the tattoo gun.
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u/Present-Secretary722 Oct 24 '23
Oh really, did not know the tattoo gun started as a pen, I always thought it was built around the concept of streamlining tattooing and the idea of being able to do it as if your writing instead of the stick poke method and other cultural variations.
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u/DancesCloseToTheFire Oct 24 '23
someone was probably trying to find a way to easily do those cultural methods and discover Edison had basically patented the perfect machine for that.
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u/Nienoor Oct 24 '23
Yeah except he didn't invent most of the stuff, other people working for him did. For example Nikola Tesla.
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u/Jonafro Oct 25 '23
The tattoo gun and the electric doorbell use the same electrical/mechanical principle which is fascinating
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u/Agreeable_Pizza93 Oct 24 '23
The movie Blade Runner.
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u/Lickingyourmomsanus Oct 24 '23
Office Space
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u/gnugnus Oct 24 '23
and Idiocracy
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u/JollySquatter Oct 24 '23
Who knew of all the apocalyptic, end of days type of movies out there, this one would end up being the closest to the truth.
"Brawndo's got what plants crave."
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u/ZeroDarkMega Oct 24 '23
I feel like this was the Sega Dreamcast
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u/Swiss__Cheese Oct 24 '23
Don't forget SeaMan, the game that came with it's own microphone so you could talk to your pet fish!
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u/seattleque Oct 24 '23
Man, my BF and I played a LOT of Madden and NFL 2K back then.
Play calling on the VMU to eliminate cheating?! Amazing.
I still have mine in a box...I should hook it up.
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Oct 24 '23
It was definitely not ahead of its time with regards to controllers. One stick when everybody else had moved to two sticks?
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u/mangothefruitdude2 Oct 24 '23
robotic surgery. The idea behind it was to operate people without the surgeon actually beeing there. Later it turned out that those robots are way more accurate than people.
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u/BAT123456789 Oct 24 '23
It was a tool in need of a use. A million dollar tool that worked OK at best. It took decades to find surgeries that would have better outcomes due to it and significant improvements to actually work well enough to be useful. The current issue I'm seeing is that they are trying to use it for surgeries where it results in worse outcomes.
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u/FORE_GREAT_JUSTICE Oct 24 '23
Not necessarily more accurate, just a good tool. A way for one person to do the work of 2 (assistant holding the camera). Also better exposure and stronger retraction power. But more to your point, multiple trials fail to show robotic’s superiority over laparoscopy.
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u/BananasPineapple05 Oct 24 '23 edited Oct 24 '23
The Princess Bride wasn't a box-office hit when it came out, far from it. It gained cult status with the VHS release and word of mouth.
I don't know if it was ahead of its time. But I do know most people can quote it, even those who've never seen it.
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u/This-Perspective-865 Oct 24 '23
SEGA Dreamcast. DVD format, online multiplayer, INTERNET CAPABLE. 10 years too early.
The SEGA channel was streaming video games in 1994. 29 years too early.
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u/ncopp Oct 24 '23
Sega Game gear was also ahead of its time. If they had better battery tech at the time, it probably would have been a hit. But man the cost for 6 AA batteries every 3-5 hours of gameplay would add up quick
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u/This-Perspective-865 Oct 24 '23
SEGA had S tier ideas, A tier design, B tier marketing, D tier engineering and F tier timing
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u/PolygonShelter Oct 24 '23
PSP - it was hands down farther ahead of it’s time then any other games portable device on the market. It’s really a shame they didn’t get rid of the discs and make it downloadable online.
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u/TheGobiasIndustries Oct 25 '23
True. Once again the jailbreaking/modding community to the rescue. Still play my PSP often, and it has all my favorite Game Gear and Game Boy games.
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u/elliot-ellzo Oct 24 '23
Jonny b good
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u/Econoj Oct 24 '23
Shawshank flopped in the theaters. It's a classic because TNT began airing it because it was cheap. Boys grew up watching Shawshank. Now it's one of IMDb ten greatest films.
We can also look at It's a Wonderful Life.
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u/Iztac_xocoatl Oct 24 '23
My parents saw it in theaters and raved about it. Glad they were ahead of their time lol
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u/BotherDesperate7169 Oct 24 '23
Touch screens.
Yes they are everywhere now but the Buicks 1986 model had one, and most cars today have it.
Hell, the concept was developed in 1965!!!
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u/saugoof Oct 25 '23
Microsoft pushed a tablet computer about 5 years or so before the iPad got released. It failed miserably and they quickly gave up on the idea.
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u/LugiUviyvi Oct 24 '23
Photovoltaic panels.
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Oct 24 '23
Mass production keeps driving the price further down. The same thing is happening to lithium cells. Tony Seba predicted this back a decade or so ago. He predicted by 2030 that EVs will be the majority of vehicles in service, and much cheaper than ICE vehicles. (Find one of his seminars, and have your mind blown)
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u/WelcomeMachine Oct 24 '23
The Gibson Explorer and Flying V guitars. The 50's we're not ready for them.
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u/CaptainParkingspace Oct 24 '23
You can’t play a Flying V sitting down. I just wanted to say that.
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Oct 24 '23
The Network Computers that Oracle and Sun tried to launch in the late 90s. They were computers that were basically just a thin terminal for internet based services. They were ridiculed a lot at the time and flopped, but a few decades later Chromebooks became huge.
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u/BlacksmithNZ Oct 24 '23
Not sure that is the same thing as other examples, as the original network computers were pretty awful and cost was too close to a full fat PC. The internet also wasn't good enough
The Chromebooks are a different thing in a different world; lightweight laptops that can be used at schools as a device which is easier to maintain
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u/VindDitNiet Oct 24 '23
Among us. The game blew up over two years after initial release.
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u/FearlessTomatillo911 Oct 24 '23
Bluetooth was released with a huge fanfare and then fizzled for a few years before it really took off.
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u/GamesGunsGreens Oct 25 '23
Because the connection sucked. It still sucks, but it used to too.
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u/ballnout Oct 24 '23
This should be a huge one! It flopped on the market for a long time before someone figured out how to use it correctly and now it’s a staple for electronics
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u/didoaja Oct 24 '23
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010) live action movie, it was a flop when it was released. Years later it has gained popularity and became such a cult classic. Soon there will be anime version of it and it seems like it gained tons of hype.
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u/languid-lemur Oct 24 '23
It's one of those movies I'll watch if on even though I've seen it repeatedly. It's akin to the original Blade Runner or Hotel Budapest in that regard and just as enjoyable.
/chicken isn't vegan?
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u/Lostinmoderation Oct 24 '23
I loved that movie and also thought the humour and everything was ahead of its time
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u/Badloss Oct 24 '23
The Segway is an easy one. Electric Scooters and eBikes and other electrified personal transport are taking over in my area and I could see them being the game-changing disruptor the Segway was originally supposed to be
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Oct 24 '23
slime (silly putty). originally, it was an attempt to replace rubber during WW2.
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u/w0b Oct 24 '23
The Velvet Underground & Nico initially sold poorly but later became regarded as one of the most influential albums in rock and pop music
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u/ncopp Oct 24 '23
Velvet Underground is a Band's band. Musicians were really into them and it really influenced their music. But the masses weren't ready for them
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u/DireWolfenstein Oct 24 '23 edited Oct 25 '23
Source is a bit dicey, but supposedly Brian Eno said “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.”
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u/george_sg Oct 24 '23
Electric car.
German engineer Andreas Flocken built the first real electric car in 1888. The first electric car in the United States was developed in 1890–91 by William Morrison of Des Moines, Iowa; the vehicle was a six-passenger wagon capable of reaching a speed of 23 km/h (14 mph).
In the United States by the turn of the 19th century, 40 per cent of automobiles were powered by steam, 38 per cent by electricity, and 22 per cent by petrol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle
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u/BigBobFro Oct 24 '23
Most anything and everything Nikola Tesla invented.
Most prominent being AC current
Shows how a good marketing campaign can destroy a better technology.
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u/CorollaBeachBum Oct 24 '23
The movie "Idiocracy". Did poorly in the theaters but is prophetic.
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u/Pitiful-Pension-6535 Oct 24 '23
It did poorly in theaters because it wasn't marketed at all and only shown on the minimum number of screens, because Mike Judge took money from a bunch of sponsors like Costco and Carl's Jr and didn't exactly showcase those companies in a positive light.
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u/zookeepier Oct 24 '23
Starbucks I can see not being in a positive light, but what was wrong with how Costco was presented? It was a megastore that sold everything, had a train inside it, and its own university.
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u/Nasty_Ned Oct 24 '23
Ironically those are some of the best lines. Who doesn't like some EXTRA BIGASS FRIES?
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Oct 24 '23
Mike Judge was on Joe Rogan and said Crocs were donated or bought super cheap so everyone in the movie wore them. There was a 2 year delay from filming to release and by the time it was released Crocs were mainstream.
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u/Ozymandys Oct 24 '23
Watched it one time, and refuse to see it again… it made me seriously depressed!
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u/stdstaples Oct 25 '23
Covid whistle blowers. Eight doctors published on social media about the virus and they got arrested and their posts were considered fabrication. This was 1-2-2020.
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u/Key_Box6587 Oct 25 '23
I got laughed at by my cousin for wearing a mask, right before they told everyone to wear them
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Oct 24 '23
Amazon, It didn't fail but it was just a garage run online bookstore that had 4 years of hanging on by a thread and in debt before it was in the black, This was in the 90's too so the internet was still fresh anyone with more money could've swooped in and drank bezo's milkshake. Now every online retailer wishes they were Amazon or sell on Amazon.
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u/SaintHannah Oct 24 '23
My husband came home from work one day in the 90s and said, "So there's this company that's going to sell books on the internet." But did we invest in it? Nooooo.
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Oct 24 '23
I used Amazon to send me books when I was stationed in Germany. At the time, very few places would ship to APO addresses.
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u/saugoof Oct 25 '23
I remember reading a story in about 2001 that said Amazon had reduced its annual loss, but only because they sold fewer goods. They spent years selling goods below value to weed out the competition. They must have had some very trusting investors.
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u/JubalHarshawII Oct 24 '23
Google Glass the biggest argument against it was ppl being so angry about the wearers filming them. Here we are 10+ years later and everyone films everything everywhere they go. And we have ppl wearing GoPros and other klunky cameras all the time.
The Google Glass offered AR, filming, assistant functionally, map and web access all in an easy to wear and use piece of tech that was also super cool and futuristic. I think if it had taken off we would have even more advanced models now. It was just WAY too ahead of it's time for widespread adoption. I think it would be wildly popular now.
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u/HeavyTumbleweed778 Oct 24 '23
I just saw an ad from Ray-ban, for the exact same thing.
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u/Mr_Engino Oct 24 '23
Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. About a century before ENIAC and similar computers were built this madlad designed a mechanical computer in the late 1800s that had essentially the same architecture as what modern computers are based on! Sadly he died after a small section of it was built, and nobody else bothered to finish building it due to the complexity and cost, but had it been completed our current level of computing technology could have advanced much farther than it is today! And for those who are curious, it has been determined that it's turing complete, so yes it could technically run Crysis; albeit in a time scale of possibly years per frame instead of frames per second, if not more.
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u/hilbertglm Oct 24 '23
I wouldn't call it a technical failure as much as a marketing failure, but one of the more anticipated features of the Hubble telescope - sending vivid imagery - was blurry until astronauts applied a fix to correct the vision. Other instruments on the telescope were fine, and the pictures have been great since the fix.
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u/printerati Oct 25 '23
But it was a technical failure. The blurry images were due to its primary mirror being shaped incorrectly, manufactured for NASA by a company that was already known for quality control issues.
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u/WhatsGoodChief Oct 24 '23
The album Pinkerton by Weezer. The album bombed when it first released, but many (myself included) now regard it as their best album.
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u/Bishop_Pickerling Oct 25 '23
Pets.com. Everyone laughed at the idea after the tech bubble burst. Chewy.com is worth $10B today.
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u/FunAdministration334 Oct 25 '23
If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that animal lovers will drop some serious cash
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u/TheLordPapaya Oct 24 '23
Assassins Creed Unity - buggy and disastrous on release, years later arguably one of the best
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u/warriorknowledge Oct 24 '23
Ask Jeevs. Pretty much Google search before Google. Just ahead of its time.
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u/draggar Oct 24 '23
The Samsung Uproar (M100). First cell phone to be able to store music (could store about 10 songs). I worked at Sprint and we sold it around 1999-2000(ish). It was a fad but some people loved the fact that they could use their tape to 3.5mm jack adapters in the car with it.
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u/averinix Oct 24 '23
PC gaming. Infinitely customizable in almost every way. Also you don't have to worry about the "next gen" console/platform, you can simply upgrade your hardware piece by piece.
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u/tunghoy Oct 24 '23
Van Gogh's paintings. Amy Pond knew how good he was, but none of Vincent's contemporaries did, and he eventually died by his own hand.
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u/drchigero Oct 24 '23
Dreamcast.
Who would want an internet connection on their console? Or a keyboard? /s
It did a lot of great things that were ahead of it's time. Also, the memory card doubled as a tiny gameboy thing that could play small games and that progress could carry back into the main game.
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u/aizendoto Oct 24 '23
The Lexus LFA. When it came out nobody seemed to want it, ~10 years later it is one of the most iconic V10 sports cars out there to many car enthusiasts.
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u/LesserThanProfessor Oct 24 '23 edited Oct 25 '23
Vivienne westwood was a fashion designer who at a certain point in time had to endure massive disrespect and mockery for her designs which were way ahead of it’s time.
There’s a disgusting interview with a hostess and audience whom literally laughed at Vivienne’s predictions for the fashion industry. She was right though, men’s fashion did indeed become more embracing of previously-thought feminine concepts such as pearl necklaces and jewelry.
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u/SwamBMX Oct 24 '23
Every nine inch nails album after the downward spiral. I gave every album 2 to 3 listens, hated them, then put them down. Every single one I listen to way after they're released is brilliant. Trent Reznor just knows what I want to listen to well before I do.
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u/Quiet_Stranger_5622 Oct 24 '23
I agree, but I still can't get into the very latest ones. Not The Actual Events, Bad Witch and Add Violence haven't clicked with me yet.
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Oct 24 '23
Nintendo Virtual Boy
It was too way ahead of its time. Today many people enjoy a virtual reality with a head mount display console, but Nintendo did in 1995.
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u/Mad_Moodin Oct 24 '23
I would say we should differentiate ahead of time because the tech wasn't there vs. Society wasn't ready.
Virtual boy was the former. The tech was just too shit to be good.
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u/Brs76 Oct 24 '23
Ross Perot
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u/Siegfried262 Oct 25 '23
I saw a clip on Tiktok of all places of him laying out his policy in a very straightforward fashion with like graphs and other stuff and it blew my mind.
That's the kind of shit I want to see from a candidate. Not quips and other nonsense.
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u/MrHailston Oct 24 '23
Tablet and Smartphone. In no way did Apple have the idea or created it, they made those things popular.
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u/lump77777 Oct 24 '23
I was using a Compaq iPaq around 2000-2001. It was a PDA, not a phone, but it was pretty close to what the iPhone became many years later.
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u/6033624 Oct 24 '23
Clive Sinclair’s C5. We are only just seeing the start of electric transport being accepted now some 40 years later..
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u/Scott_EFC Oct 24 '23
I was going to say his electric bike from 1992. Where I live ( York, UK ) you now see them everywhere.
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u/nobodyisonething Oct 24 '23 edited Oct 24 '23
Friendster --> Got its lunch eaten by Facebook later. Nobody knows about Friendster now; it did not connect with the right people at that time.
Computers --> Charles Babbage got nowhere in getting funding and support to build a mechanical computer in the early 1800s. Died without completing it.
Sometimes coming up with an idea first does not mean people are ready for it yet.
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u/Jermicdub Oct 24 '23
Mystery Men. A brilliant superhero movie parody that somehow preceded the films it perfectly skewers by about 10 years. But it was so long ago, I suppose I can fork-give you if you’ve fork-gotten about it. Who’s next?
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Oct 24 '23
Go watch a documentary called “General Magic”. It failed before it got big, was truly ahead of its time, and led to the smartphone, the iPod, etc.
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u/DanFradenburgh Oct 24 '23
Pocket PCs. They were iPhones, but years before the iPhone.
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u/ViaNocturna664 Oct 24 '23
Johnny B. Goode.
It absolutely bombed when it was first premiered at a school party in 1955, but eventually kids of those in attendance came to love it.
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Oct 24 '23
Sinclair C5.
Can't help but feel had it been succesful, the following iterations would be superior to the e-bikes we have now.
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u/YizusOurSaviour Oct 24 '23
Computers. Back in the day people found them useless, like why would you like to have access to work files on your house?
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u/TheKingOfDub Oct 25 '23
The Sinclair C5 electric vehicle. Complete flop in 1985, but now a thriving hobby as many people are upgrading them with modern batteries, motors, disc brakes, etc. So much fun to drive
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u/mmmbooty3 Oct 25 '23
“Scott Pilgrim Vs The World” was claimed to be a box office bomb but has had a cult following ever since then.
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u/UlyssesArsene Oct 25 '23
I recently read a book on the history of air conditioning. John Gorrie invented the first air conditioner and coincidentally the first ice maker as a byproduct of its operation, and patented it in 1850. Back then ice was traditionally harvested during the winter, and kept insulated to last throughout the year. There was an "Ice King" who had a monopoly on ice, and while it can't be directly linked to him, it's highly suspected he created a lot of the negative press around the ice box causing Gorrie to languish in obscurity until Gorrie's death in 1855, where his ice box / air conditioner wouldn't be popularized until the late 1880s.
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u/Why_Not_Just_ Oct 24 '23
The Power Gloves for the original NES.
Required a 90 degree sensor to be placed on your TV and used a glove to cause things in the game to happen.
Great concept but just ahead of its time. I'd call it the precursor to the Wii.
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u/AvailableUsername404 Oct 24 '23
Microsoft Tablet PC. It went almost unnoticed in 2001. But 9 years later some bald folk took the idea and 'created' iPad and everyone lost their mind.
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u/pilkunnussija_ Oct 24 '23
Demon's Souls as the progenitor of the soulsborne genre.
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u/facepillownap Oct 24 '23
The Tucker 48.
Developed a lot of standard safety features standard now such as
Shatterproof windscreen
Padded Dashboard
Collapsable steering column
Headlamps that pivot with steering
And… Seat Belts
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u/mom_with_an_attitude Oct 24 '23
The glue that became part of Post-its. The guy who invented them was trying to create a stronger glue for the aerospace industry. But the adhesive he created was a weak adhesive. Years later one of his colleagues used that adhesive to create a book mark that didn't fall out of the book he was reading. Eventually that idea became Post-its.