- Joined
- Aug 2, 2001
- Messages
- 191
I've just read the thread about GINGER, and the whens, whys, and whats, have got me thinking about other 'Cutting Edge' inventions that never quite made it.
One that springs readily to mind is The American Computer Company's 'Trans-Capacitor'.
This 'revolutionary' piece of kit was supposed to have been engineered using instructions found amongst papers, supposedly, arising from the Roswell crash. Working at a molecular level it was alleged that this piece of equipment could transfer information so fast that it could only be measured in Femto-seconds (or quadrillionths of a second).
It was going to make computers smaller, faster than today's supercomputers, cheaper, and more energy efficient.
They were all set to launch a huge solid state hard disk drive (sorry, can't remember the exact capacity) based around this technology, a couple of years ago, but didn't.
I remember hearing a news report about the non-launch of this drive, but that was it.
What happened to the Trans-capacitor?
Was it all hype? A practical joke by the American Computer Company? A real piece of kit that just had a lot of teething trouble?
I've tried to locate info, on it but everything I find is about 1 1/2 to 2 years old. If any one can point towards finding more info on what happened to this white elephant of the computer industry it would been a real help.
Does anyone else remember any hyped inventions that either failed to deliver, or just never materialised?
One that springs readily to mind is The American Computer Company's 'Trans-Capacitor'.
This 'revolutionary' piece of kit was supposed to have been engineered using instructions found amongst papers, supposedly, arising from the Roswell crash. Working at a molecular level it was alleged that this piece of equipment could transfer information so fast that it could only be measured in Femto-seconds (or quadrillionths of a second).
It was going to make computers smaller, faster than today's supercomputers, cheaper, and more energy efficient.
They were all set to launch a huge solid state hard disk drive (sorry, can't remember the exact capacity) based around this technology, a couple of years ago, but didn't.
I remember hearing a news report about the non-launch of this drive, but that was it.
What happened to the Trans-capacitor?
Was it all hype? A practical joke by the American Computer Company? A real piece of kit that just had a lot of teething trouble?
I've tried to locate info, on it but everything I find is about 1 1/2 to 2 years old. If any one can point towards finding more info on what happened to this white elephant of the computer industry it would been a real help.
Does anyone else remember any hyped inventions that either failed to deliver, or just never materialised?