In the spirit of Hrokay‘s comment about spider legs and Segway mounted guns, here is a list of 7 military weapons you won’t believe they actually built. I think #1 is especially relevant: if you can mount a cannon on a scooter, you can mount a gun on a Segway! Of course this also has a reference to the Big Dog robot from Boston Dynamics (you may remember him for being especially creepy).
Segway
Failure to Launch
I read a pretty good article the other day about companies that didn’t really go anywhere, didn’t live up to expectations. These weren’t just tiny little operations though, these were companies that were either A) on the top of their game, huge companies that just fizzled for some reason, or B) companies that had great technology or so much hype that they seemed like sure-fire winners. You will have heard of all of these products and that’s what made it interesting to me.
The first product that came to mind was the Segway. I remember when that came out, they had quotes from people claiming it would revolutionize the world, it was the death of cars, etc. etc. From big names too. And what happened? Do you know anybody who has one? (aside from the Chicago police of course) Sure enough, it was #1 on the list.
Unfortunately, we don’t know why some of these companies failed, but the article tries to at least guess what happened. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting read.