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Things Of Future Passed


Frank Hovis

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HOLA441
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HOLA444

How many of these are there? The next big thing, the now, then it was mostly abandoned.

I don't mean things like Jet Cars that were predicted but never actually happened.

Chrysler built a bunch of jet cars, and they worked pretty well. They were killed by NOx emission laws... every time Chrysler fixed the design to meet the new laws, the US government went and passed new ones.

Either the US government was so stupid that they wanted to be reliant on oil when they could have had engines that burned pretty much anything you could stuff into the fuel tank, or the oil companies didn't want to lose a large part of their market.

Edit: oh, and not to forget minimal maintenance, and no oil changes. So no more six-monthly trips to car dealers.

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HOLA445

Remember that no matter however you have passed the time you have never past the time, not even in the distant past. Past can be an adjective, a noun, a preposition, or an adverb, but never a verb. If you need to write the past tense of the verb to pass, use passed.

Ahhhhhhhhh. I didn't have the guts to mention it...

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Chrysler built a bunch of jet cars, and they worked pretty well. They were killed by NOx emission laws... every time Chrysler fixed the design to meet the new laws, the US government went and passed new ones.

Either the US government was so stupid that they wanted to be reliant on oil when they could have had engines that burned pretty much anything you could stuff into the fuel tank, or the oil companies didn't want to lose a large part of their market.

Edit: oh, and not to forget minimal maintenance, and no oil changes. So no more six-monthly trips to car dealers.

I meant Jetson type flying cars.

But on your point I was unaware until a James May car programme this year when he drove one of these Jet cars owned by Jay Leno. They said it could run on many fuels including perfume so you could send out sweet-smelling exhaust fumes.

It seemed like a totally normal car.

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Same here. Known as the 'bomber's watch'.

I had no idea that people still wore these. I get the retro chic thing but I much prefer the traditional watch face.

If I was to buy a retro one I'd like one of my old "Boy's Timex" types.

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You are officially 'trendy'.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

I had one of those Casios for years. It broke when I took it off whilst working on a car. The car fell off the stands when I was going to change the suspension springs, and landed on the watch. I should have kept it on.

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I had one of those Casios for years. It broke when I took it off whilst working on a car. The car fell off the stands when I was going to change the suspension springs, and landed on the watch. I should have kept it on.

But then you would have had a broken wrist at least. Lucky escape if you ask me.

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But then you would have had a broken wrist at least. Lucky escape if you ask me.

Look on the bright side!

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Sony MiniDisc

Sony were a touch unfortunate with the minidisc. It was a great format IMHO, it just happened to come along at the wrong time. The internet has pretty much made all physical media obsolete.

Hydrogen fuel cells - whatever happened to the hydrogen economy?

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Some stuff that didn't make it long term, but now looks like it might be coming back soon/re-invented/trendy again:

  • Supersonic passenger jets
  • Sodastream
  • Virtual Reality (remember the 80s version?).
  • Neural networks and AI were a big research areas in the 80's, dead for 2-3 decades, now back with a bang.
  • Manned space exploration
  • BBC Micro (now the microbit)
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It's just waiting for someone to find a hydrogen mine to power it.

I've found me a hydrogen lake. Trouble is the hydrogen is bound up in its oxide - I'm still working on how to extract it efficiently.

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Sony MiniDisc

When it came out the sound quality was no better than good analog tape cassettes.

Then recordable CDs came out, and portable CD players that buffered so they didn't skip when you went jogging with them.

By the end IIRC the MiniDisc SQ was actually not far off or level with CD, but by then streaming and downloading had taken over.

DJs liked MiniDiscs for recording sets, but once you could put a CD into a car stereo, there was no longer any need to take a copy from one format to the other (vinyl > tape).

It was the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Separately, they still don't seem to have got the jet-pack technology used by Bond in Thunderball quite right - it only works for a very short time and they're still incredibly dangerous.

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