As a car enthusiast, I can think of a good one, the Ford Nucleon.

During the 1950s and 1960s, there was considerable interest in nuclear power and its potential applications. This led to the idea of using nuclear energy to propel cars. The concept behind a nuclear car was to utilize a small nuclear reactor to generate steam, which would then power the vehicle’s engine.

Of course back in those days, this was extremely futurustic and some at the time thought this would be a game changer, but ultimately, the safety aspect was one of the biggest reasons why this idea was dropped, and I probably don’t have to explain why it may not have considered to be safe, I mean, it was using nuclear power, so even if the engineers tried to make it as safe as possible, IF something went wrong, it would have been catastrophic.

Ever since then, the interests in the automotive sector has shifted to Electric and Hydrogen.

Still, a very intriguing concept car and idea.

Outside cars, you have blimps, and I personally believe if we tried to make something like a hindenburg today with existing technology, we might have been a lot more successful than back then (as it goes way back to 1930s), there are still some blimps used occasionally, I also don’t believe those use hydrogen(?), but they are not the “game changer in air travel” it was once seen as, although we can’t rule out a comeback.

What about you guys?

  • TheArstaInventorOP
    4•1 year ago

    Wow that is interesting. If I am understanding this right, was minidisc called that way because it was smaller than a traditional CD? Or what is just a different format? What really was it’s benefits back then over conventional CDs?

    • FarraigePlaisteach
      8•1 year ago

      Imagine you can make cuts anywhere in your CD tracks and move the segments around. You can also name each segment so they don’t just have to be 00-99+.

      I had a great time recording radio shows, cutting out the DJ and entering all the song titles. The LCD display would show the song / artist title while playing which was big back then :)

    • @MrJameGumb
      7•1 year ago

      It was more like a floppy disc from a computer. It was a small writable disc inside a cartridge housing. It sounded just as good if not better than a CD with the added bonus that it couldn’t get scratched up, and wouldn’t skip like a CD if the player moved around.

      • nicktron
        6•1 year ago

        And it was much much smaller than a CD. The player was akin to a smaller version of a Walkman.

    • @givesomefucksEnglish
      7•1 year ago

      It was a small cd, but encased like a floppy.

      I think 1.5 of them was the same as an iPod of the time, because it stored the songs as data not audio on the disk.

      So if you never changed the disc, it was 75% the storage of an iPod. And I want to say a 3-5 pack was only $20.

      They just never took off, but they were awesome back in the day.