Engineerguy videos & audio

Stories of Technological Failure: PicturePhone, Dvorak keyboard & Betamax

06.25.2014 - By Bill HammackPlay

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Introduction to a short series of three videos that takes a "snackable" look at the failure of three famous engineered objects: The Bell System's PicturePhone, which lost the company a half billion dollars, but nearly created the internet; the Dvorak keyboard, which is faster than our current QWERTY arrangement, but failed to gain traction in the marketplace; and the technically superb Betamax video cassette recorder, which lost to an inferior VHS-format machine.

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