Tech that seems to have vanished

Hydrogen fuel cells

Generally, a technology has to have a commercial market that scales in order to be pursued, much less to be widely and cheaply available.

It's often the case that a number of technologies have to converge to make a compelling product, and then all of them become commercially available at basically the same time. Firearms, for instance, required both the ability to cast strong, straight metal barrels and the ability to produce gunpowder. Prior to around 1600, these technologies existed but nobody was really pursuing them very hard because either one, by itself, isn’t that useful. Put them together and suddenly the world changes.

Look at the Gartner Hype Cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle

Some things have rebounded after a dismal start

Tablet computers (credit Steve Jobs) vs. HyperCard (credit Steve Jobs)

All sorts of digital (and analog) media (until they're nearly gone)

Pivoting headlights (making a comeback, I understand )

Cameras that don't need a battery

Gas Turbines?

> Thermal Cameras

They're not built in, but you can easily get a thermal camera that plugs into your mobile these days - that one's definitely been improving rather than disappearing. Due to the cost of ownership, there are also companies that will come in with their own and do thermal mapping of your whole house.

I'm not sure if this one really makes a list since nothing was ever mass produced, but automatic food preparer/cooker machines are kind of a popular sci-fi-of-the-80s idea. Some attempts were made and mostly failed to get traction. I've not heard about them for years now.

> still cannot buy graphene in any real quantities (cm's for $100's)

I’ve never needed to buy graphene before… why would most people? Not every technology needs to be applicable at home for it to count as “not vanished”.

Upon googling it, I found this source for about $1/cm^2 of graphene, which is 100x cheaper than what you seemed to be claiming: https://grolltex.com/product/monolayer-graphene-on-copper-fo...

Regardless, one recent product announcement I remember hearing about, which can apparently be bought on Amazon for $13: https://www.thermal-grizzly.com/en/products/625-kryosheet-en

Graphene is real. It hasn’t vanished. It just takes a long time for a new material to become widely used unless it fits neatly as a substitute for something else that was already there. By all appearances, the graphene industry is still growing.

> Thermal Cameras

Seriously? Thermal cameras are commonly used in so many professional applications. They’re not even that expensive, if you want one. No, every smartphone maker is not going to add 5% to 50% to their BoM (depending on quality and phone price, rough estimate) for a feature most people don’t need. Some smartphones offer thermal cameras for people who need that.

Cloning has largely been banned, no wonder there hasn’t been innovation there

Thermal cameras are subject to tight ITAR restrictions, which would tend to restrict their use in consumer products. I'd expect 1080p thermal cameras are a thing, if you have the "need" and can comply with all of the restrictions.

Memristors are touted as the forth fundamental electronic component after resistors, capacitors and inductors. Progress is steady and fairly recent but the technology only seems to hold public attention for very brief periods over the decades. So I guess you could say it has withered in the eyes of the public at least. It should be a big deal though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor

Physical newspapers and books. Not trying to be cute, but it's very easy for these vanishing technologies to, well, vanish.

Smart glasses (e.g. Google Glass).

IIRC Google Glass was announced accompanied by sky divers landing at the conference center.

Thermal Cameras - I really thought every phone would have a cheap, mass manufacture thermal camera by now, so everybody could do "U so hot" jokes.

They may not be in phones, but thermal cameras are cheap, and ubiquitous in many fields. I'd venture that the majority of the fire departments in the US have thermal cameras in operation at this point, and probably most of the people (including hobbyists) with an electronics test bench have one.

/u/davidhyde already said it, but I'll pile on: memristors. So much hype and potential, but so far as I can tell it's still more or less impossible to buy a memristor today.

E-ink displays... After seeing the OLPC I expected every display would soon have the same properties of eye-strain-reduction, legibility in the sun, angle indifference and low power consumption. Yet here we are - while there does seem to be a resurgent niche of e-ink enthusiast products it seems like they never broke through to the mainstream except in ebook readers. It's a shame!

The technology I always cite for something that had huge hype then died is 3D generally. I remember around the time Avatar was release everyone was convinced that 3D was the next big thing.

For several years after Avatar it was hard to watch movies that weren't showing in 3D. People rushed out to buy 3D TVs. Phones were featuring 3D displays. Cameras were boasting the ability to capture 3D pictures...

I think 3D will eventually make a come back as VR technology progresses, but I genuinely didn't get the hype for 3D during that period.

I was reminded by another post on HN today: RAD - Rapid Application Development. Newer "no/low code" systems pale in comparison to what novices used to be able to do with Visual Basic or Hypercard or even old PHP. I was one of those novices and I learned so much from them.

I remember watching a tv program named "Beyond 2000" (obviously, this was last century) which featured upcoming technology. One of these was an ultra-sonic dishwasher. It was supposed to be faster, and use less detergent and water than 'ordinary' dishwashers (though I suppose dishwashing machines in the 1990s probably used a lot more water than they do now). Never heard anything about it again.

Not world-changing, but self-heating coffee/cocoa cans! I remember getting these 15 years ago at Walmart and thought they were the coolest thing ever, but they never really took off.

Bubble memory

This might not qualify because it was never really in the zeitgeist, but I remember around 2000 that flywheels were going to be an amazing mobile energy storage mechanism. Your car would rev up a massive disk inside a vacuum, and use its momentum to propel itself in stop and go traffic.

I believe the showstopper was that in even the slightest fender-bender, the flywheel would get off-balance and yeet off in a random direction, causing mayhem and calamity.

ipod

Starlite [0] thermal shielding plastic.

the inventor took it's recipe to the grave.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite

Tech generally disappears (though it never/rarely really does completely) either because it proves not viable/economic, or it's superseded. Though sometime it's because of shifts in fashion, or legal/moral restrictions.

Incandescent lightbulbs, gas mantle tech, CRT display tech, vinyl/cassette and especially CD/DVD tech, etc.

With fashion, maybe teasmades (alarm clocks that brew tea), I'm sure there are better examples.

With legal/moral/health restrictions, maybe 'consumer' radioactive tech, radium clocks etc.

I worked for a lab that did IR research 20 years ago, so I don't know if this is still the case. But at the time, the IR sensors were made with a rare mineral only available in a remote region of Russia.

At the time (late 90s) I bought (on behalf of my employer) a FLIR camera that had a 512x512 sensor for $70k. I remember the cheapest camera we could find was 15k, it had almost no optics and the sensor was noisy as all get out.

I have a thermal inspection workstation (FLIR) that cost about $2700 and has a 320x240 sensor.

So there really has been a cost reduction. It's just more linear than exponential. A few years back, I got a camera for a friend which had a 90x90 sensor, and I think it cost $165 if memory serves. When I worked at that lab, it was inconceivable that a normal person would ever own an IR camera. They were the exclusive domain of researchers, large corporations, and law enforcement. I have 5 or so.

Also, the average person doesn't understand the electromagnetic spectrum, or concepts like emissivity or reflection. They think they're seeing an accurate temperature from their device, not understanding that every material they measure has its own k value.

** BTW: I tried to research this mineral/element and could not find any documentation on it. If you happen to know its name, or if I'm completely off base and its not used anymore, I'd love to know about it.

3D printers which can fix everything at your home.

Hand gesture computer control (Leap Motion).

Flash.

Wework. Peloton.

Google Plus. Google Wave. Google Reader. Google...

Alcohol batteries for your laptop / phone. Instead of a battery it would be a fuel cell that you would just add alcohol to instead of recharging it.

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/tiny-alcohol-fu...

Music/mp3 players. Something that has local storage and plays files stored there, and works away from network coverage, and doesn't require a subscription of any kind.

Intel Optane. That was pretty muck killed off, but has its uses.

Some good examples here already. The one I was optimistic about (it was never super hyped but sounded interesting) was laptops that would have heatpipes bringing the heat from the CPU to the lid were it would just dissipate - so using laptop lid as a radiator. I remember they were saying it could dissipate ~20W continuously (which was not enough at the time ~2005?) but lots of laptops now could be completely fan-free.

I can't find much about this on google, but I swear it was a thing. Some people discussed it on this website for half-baked ideas:

https://www.halfbakery.com/idea/LCD_20heatsinks

The Orbo "free energy" device that turned out to be running on batteries in the end.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn

https://www.wired.com/2009/12/orbo-strikes-back-perpetual-mo...

While not entirely dead in the 90s I remember reading article after article about how ramjets and scramjets were going to change air travel forever any day now. That day still hasn't arrived.

> Thermal Cameras - I really thought every phone would have a cheap, mass manufacture thermal camera by now, so everybody could do "U so hot" jokes.

Well they kind of do - you can buy a tiny thermal camera for your smartphone. They aren't built-in in most phones because it's a specialty feature and it's not "cheap" cheap.

The thing with thermal cameras is that the progress has been artificially restricted by the arms regulations, especially in the US. That was a major factor behind them staying so expensive for years despite having the tech.

Not very many people talking about NFTs nowadays, perhaps unsurprisingly

Hyperloop

Something like the Ergodex DX1: Easily spatially reconfigurable physical keys.

https://www.ergocanada.com/products/other/ergodex_dx1_input_...

In the 00’s there was a lot of hype around “smart” textiles being the next big thing. A lot of sports companies were trying to make something happen with it but aside from some niche projects, seems to have fizzled.

In the 90’s, mini discs were hot for a year and then just vanished.

Nuclear powered domestic water heaters. You could have heated your home just by pumping water through a radio active pipe section. It would have been very cheep, carbon neutral, and relatively safe (no risk of chernobl style meltdowns). Trouble is disposal and security.

Bubble and holographic memory.

Magneto-optical and fluorescent multi-layer disks.

Plasma displays.

VLIW/EPIC processors.

Smart dust.

Especially as both microcontroller chips and sensor modules now exist at the scale of literal dust.

Juicero https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/01/juicero-s... ;)

I assume most stuff you mentioned fizzled out because there wasn't a viable business model (small number of adopters, high cost manufacturing, etc) and patents. Just look at 3d printers - been around since the 80s but the advances in computer size and being common coupled with expired patents makes it viable today.

Hardware accelerated 3D sound in video games a la EAX. That one went away with Windows NT IIRC and never surfaced again.

Stand alone portable music players - nowadays that's niche product for audiophiles.

PC sound cards - for most people integrated HD Audio is enough.

SLI, AMD Crossfire

With respect to graphene, it's possible to make reasonable quantities fairly cheaply using several different methods.

See here for a recent rundown (yeah, I know, youtube, but it's worth it in this case if you actually care about the subject.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q4UQL5k4wI

Graphene will be commercially cheap fairly soon, I suspect. Meantime, it isn't that difficult or expensive to experiment with for yourself.