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nomel · 2026-10-28T19:32:34.000Z

Do you have any good examples of tech that was immediately embraced without any prior examples or failures to monetize? I'm having trouble thinking of any.

ForHackernews · 2026-10-28T23:28:30.000Z

CDs were invented jointly by Philips and Sony and then sold successfully to the public. By 1991, they had overtaken cassette tape sales

https://www.discwizards.com/index.html%3Fp=5179.html

nomel · 2026-10-28T23:38:00.000Z

Nope [1]. Starting in the 70's, with:

> However, like many ideas far ahead of their time, the CD-ROM found few interested investors at first.

And then in 1975:

> Philips Electronics representatives visited Russell’s Battelle lab in the summer of 1975, and they discounted the entire premise of his work.

[1] http://www.computer-timeline.com/timeline/james-russel-compa...

ForHackernews · 2026-10-28T23:43:22.000Z

DVD, then. Although that's sort of cheating since it's such a natural evolution from CDs -- it was clearly better than VHS and it didn't take any convincing for people to adopt them.

(you'll probably point to DIVX but that was an experiment with a terrible business model, not a technological failure)