"Many technologies begin life as someone's vision of an ambitious, perhaps audacious, technology that is expected to have a revolutionary impact on consumers--whether families, companies, or societies. However, if that highly touted technology fails "prematurely" at some point in its life history, it becomes a spectacular flop. Employing a behavioral perspective, this book presents a sample of twelve spectacular flops encompassing the past three centuries, ranging from the world's first automobile to thenuclear-powered bomber. Because technologies may fail from many different causes, spectacular flops pose a special challenge to the author's long-term project of furnishing generalizations about technological change. Instead of constructing generalizations that apply to all spectacular flops, this book provides limited generalizations that pertain to particular groups of technologies bounded by parameters such as "long-term development projects" and "one-off projects." The reader need have no prior familiarity with the technologies because basic principles are introduced as needed"--
An archaeologist/historian of technology, Schiffer ferrets out ambitious projects that turned into spectacular flops from the late eighteenth century. He presents case studies that he admits are biased toward his own interestsenergy-related technologies, public works, transportation from the worlds first automobile to nuclear fusion reactors. Assuming his readers have no previous familiarity with the technologies he provides basic principles of electricity, steam power and jet engines. He also offers some carefully qualified generalizations which can be found in chapter 14. Annotation ©2019 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
