WI averted technologies were used on a grand scale?

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I came.
 
If there had been a larger time period between the wide spread adoption of the telephone and the invention of the radio maybe the would be some form of cable radio. You would dial in on your home phone to listen to the news, weather reports music and entertainment. You would need to plug in a better set of speakers instead of the hand set of cause to hear through out the room.

I remember my great aunts talking about some sort of 'cable radio' that existed during the 1940s I think, 'cause they had it. I think my aunt mantioned a story of 'discovering' the Third Programme- now Radio 3- and classical music- for herself by accident whilst babysitting a cousin (I think)- her aunt having a normal radio. (I think.)

Another thing could be instead of putting steam engines on wheels they are use to pull a cable. Similar to San Francisco trolley cars but over head so that canal boats can clamp on and be dragged along up stream faster then by animal/human power.

Like a static engine? Already was used in mines...

They'll build one within 25 years I believe.

What, a transatlantic tunnel? Doubt it- too expensive to say nothing of the topological challenges...

Some ideas of averted technologies, or technologies that weren't quite averted per se but were largely ignored in favor of other technologies:

- basically, any alternatives to missile-like rockets for space flight. The Soviets started their space program with converted missiles, the Americans followed, and spaceplanes, nuclear-pulse/Orion, and other possible methods of propelling oneself into space never made it big. There is a good reason for this, of course - for example, the Shuttle has proved that a poorly designed space plane is actually more expensive than a conventional rocket, while using nuclear-pulse in the lower atmosphere will most likely result in a spike in cancers and mutant hordes.

- zeppelins and balloons, of course. They weren't quite "averted" but were largely pushed aside in favor of aircraft.

Unless one found some large and extensive helium deposits, I doubt it could work, of course. Of course there's hyprogen, but then there was Hindenburg...

- Many types of storage on computers. For example, electro-optical drives were almost unknown, despite offering greater capacity for the price in the latter 1980s, mainly due to being very slow (the original NeXT computer had a 640 megabyte model, largely because a similarly-sized hard disk would have added $5000 to the cost of the machine). CD-RW and DVD-RW overtook "superfloppies" in the late 1990s - successors to Iomega's popular Zip drive from the early-mid 90s never sold or developed successors themselves, thus leaving us with no multi-gigabyte 'floppy' drives around nowadays. Or battery-backed RAM, which saw limited use in portables back in the 1980s. Advances and use of these technologies was largely limited in favor of hard disk drives, and also CDs/DVDs. Finally, a possible hard disk replacement is coming out in the form of flash memory.

Am I the only one mourning the death (or at least, terminal geriatricity) of the floppy, mewonders? (Basically only 'cause they work better with older computers, and generally with DOS).

Could we get ZIP discs/drives (or their successors) to work? Additional hardware could be overcome by building internal ones into new computers and laptops...

- Same with 'control devices'. One wonders what would have happened if Apple and others had not decided to develop upon Xerox's idea of the mouse. The alternative could be anything from a more ergonomical touchscreen concept (think Nintendo DS - have two screens, one for 'touching', one not), to using something more like a joystick (which could see parallel evolution into a trackball or trackpad independent of conventional mice. Or perhaps keyboard development would have gone further instead... perhaps even full-bore GUIs might be delayed, or evolve in a completely different manner...

I'd consider having some sort of keyboard-controlled environment, possibly with tabs instead of windows for multi-tasking, which could be accessed by keystrokes. Sort of like some old DOS shells, but could actually have programs running under it.

- Need I mention Betamax vs. VHS? Or Video CDs, which are almost unknown outside of Southeast Asia. Or even alternatives. Perhaps a cartridge-based video system? After all, for many years video *GAMES* were mostly distributed on cartridges. They would allow the same machine to be used to watch movies of vastly different lengths without resorting to different compression techniques. It also, conveniently for the big-shot movie companies, make it harder to use such machines for home video recording (although one could still make blank cartridges or a cartridge-cassette converter for this purpose).

How do these cartridges work? (i.e. existing game ones, and video by analogy.) If by some form of ROM, then home recording may have to wait until flash memory becomes a reality. Plus we might have format wars over different cartridge types...

As for Video CDs, they were around very breifly over here when the Philips CD-i (remember them anyone?) had their short-lived existence. Shame they couldn't have taken off, an early example of an all-in-one home entertainment system, before the current generation (and previous one) of games consoles.

Now if the Playstation could have incorporated V-CDs too...

Then, they're impractical I dare say -one movie could never fit on a single disc...



you have USB keys that are becoming so widespread that new computers don't have floppy drive by default (you can install it extra). USB is new floppy. Simple to use and no extra attachments. Zip drives required extra hardware which could be problematic for transfers between computers.

See above.
 
Am I the only one mourning the death (or at least, terminal geriatricity) of the floppy, mewonders? (Basically only 'cause they work better with older computers, and generally with DOS).

Could we get ZIP discs/drives (or their successors) to work? Additional hardware could be overcome by building internal ones into new computers and laptops...

Biggest way to get this would be to delay or avert writable/re-writable CDs, which are cheaper and can also play existing CD-ROM software.
I'd consider having some sort of keyboard-controlled environment, possibly with tabs instead of windows for multi-tasking, which could be accessed by keystrokes. Sort of like some old DOS shells, but could actually have programs running under it.

I'm not sure, as all the world's GUI development would be vastly different, starting with the Apple Lisa...

How do these cartridges work? (i.e. existing game ones, and video by analogy.) If by some form of ROM, then home recording may have to wait until flash memory becomes a reality. Plus we might have format wars over different cartridge types...

They'd likely be ROM, much like video game cartridges. I figure "home videos" would be essentially cassette tapes hooked to an "Adapter" cartridge - I think some early home computers even had cartridge-plugged cassette players for programs on tape.
 
Could we get ZIP discs/drives (or their successors) to work? Additional hardware could be overcome by building internal ones into new computers and laptops...

you'd have to delay USB devices. Once USB keys become big (in space power) and cheap then ZIPs are doomed. You already have USB ports on computer so using keys is just a question of software. ZIPs, however, would require new hardware and hence would raise the price. Plus USBs are small while ZIPs are big and sometimes impractical to carry around
 
you'd have to delay USB devices. Once USB keys become big (in space power) and cheap then ZIPs are doomed. You already have USB ports on computer so using keys is just a question of software. ZIPs, however, would require new hardware and hence would raise the price. Plus USBs are small while ZIPs are big and sometimes impractical to carry around

Surely USB and ZIP must have come out around the same time, tho'? What happens if every machine gets fitted with an internal ZIP drive as standard? No need for 'new hardware' then!
 
Biggest way to get this would be to delay or avert writable/re-writable CDs, which are cheaper and can also play existing CD-ROM software.

Concur. They were around before USB gizmos too.

I'm not sure, as all the world's GUI development would be vastly different, starting with the Apple Lisa...

There were programs with drop-down menus I think. Otherwise you'd have to pull out to a menu screen or have functions accessed via function keys and keystrokes. I thought of having some sort of tabs or multiple screens as an alternative environment, which might be togled by some sort of keystrokes. Just an idea, but one is going to need some sort of user-friendly idea and there's no reason why you can't have multitasking. Of course, the command line would stay somehow.

Maybe you could have more use of touchscreens instead?



They'd likely be ROM, much like video game cartridges. I figure "home videos" would be essentially cassette tapes hooked to an "Adapter" cartridge - I think some early home computers even had cartridge-plugged cassette players for programs on tape.


Why would you need them? Not enough data to fit on ROMs of the time?
 
Come to think of it I'd prefer decent-sized cartridges (with say flash memory) to either these small cards used for digital cameras, or USB sticks that stick outand on laptops that equals easy damage potential, as a data storage method.
 
What about pneumatic subways?

Always thought there was a lot of potential in there.


- Many types of storage on computers. For example, electro-optical drives were almost unknown,[…]. CD-RW and DVD-RW overtook "superfloppies" in the late 1990s - successors to Iomega's popular Zip drive from the early-mid 90s never sold or developed successors themselves, thus leaving us with no multi-gigabyte 'floppy' drives around nowadays.

- Same with 'control devices'. […] The alternative could be anything from a more ergonomical touchscreen concept (think Nintendo DS - have two screens, one for 'touching', one not), […].

- Or Video CDs, which are almost unknown outside of Southeast Asia. Or even alternatives.

You're going to like the technology related portions of my Avoiding Lost Decades timeline :).
 
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