Heres a few gadgets that didn't take off! The images and text on this artical are taken from a news feed through msn.com but i thought it was interesting!
The Sinclair C5 is one of the iconic gadgets of the 1980s – for all the wrong reasons. Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of the ZX Spectrum, came unstuck with his single-person electric vehicle, which immediately became the subject of ridicule when launched in 1985. It's not hard to see why. The vehicle's lack of gears, low height and top speed of just 15 miles per hour meant using it on the road was a recipe for disaster. The fact that it was open to the elements in a country renowned for its rain didn't help matters, either. In the end only 12,000 units were sold.
The average British person watches over four hours of television a day, so you'd imagine we'd be keen to squeeze in a couple more whenever possible. But watching your favourite show on a large flatscreen set is a vastly different experience to squinting at ant-sized actors as they emote away on a tiny 1.5" screen. That might explain why the TV wrist watch gadget failed to take off. Today smartphones satisfy most people's mobile viewing requirements, so the TV wrist watch is unlikely to make a comeback.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the public were still getting their heads around the new-fangled 'interweb', numerous gadgets that claimed to unlock its potential appeared. The CueCat, a cat-shaped handheld barcode reader, was just such a device. After plugging it into the PS/2 keyboard port the user could open a link to any website simply by scanning a barcode. In theory these special barcodes would be printed in magazines, or even on the side of products. In practice nobody wanted to access the web in such a fiddly manner.
EFFORTLESS IRONING!
Although washing up, hovering and dusting all come high on our list of worst household chores, ironing definitely tops it. For us, and millions of others who can't stand the thought of being stuck behind an ironing board, the Siemens Dressman should be a dream come true. This gadget can iron a freshly washed shirt in seconds – it even shapes and presses them as well. Why is not a massive success then? Well the price for one: €1000 is a bit steep. And unless you only wear shirts, you'll still have to iron the creases out of the rest of your clothes.
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