What are some inventions that didn't work out quite the way it was expected they would?

The wheel. An interesting garden ornament? My arse!

Fire.

Everyone spends the night looking at it. How do we put adverts in the middle of it? Get real!

Dr. Oppenheimer, do we really need a firecracker this big? What’s the celebration?

New Coke
plastic grocery bags
Microsoft BOB
Cigarettes
Mercury as a cure

lol….The segway

Cell phones…they were supposed to make us safer. Now they’re the #1 cause of traffic accidents (I think.)

Here’s the list from TIME:

Segway, New Coke, Clippy, Agent Orange, CueCat, Subprime Mortgages, Crinoline, Nintendo Virtual Boy, Farmville, Hydrogenated Oils, Honegar, Hydrogen Blimps, Hair in a Can, DDT, Auto-Tune, Red Dye No. 2, Ford Pinto, Parachute Jacket, Betamax, Baby Cage, Tanning Beds, Crocs, Hula Chair, Foursquare, Pop-Up Ads, Phone Fingers, CFCs, Plastic Grocery Bags, Bumpit, Electric Facial Mask, Sony CD Copy Protection, Venetian-Blind Sunglasses, Pet Spa, Pontiac Aztek, Snuggie for Dogs, Mizar Flying Car, Asbestos, Olestra, Comfort Wipe, Fake Ponytails, HeadOn, Pay Toilets, Tamagotchis, Leaded Gasoline, Vibrating Ab Belt, Spam E-mail, Smell-o-Vision, Smile Checks, Microsoft Bob, Vio.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1991915,00.html

But sometimes an invention fails because society isn’t ready for it yet. One example is the video telephone.

@mattbrowne
Hey, Tamagotchi were quite popular for a time.

Anyway, Macs, they suck.

Lasers are a great example of an invention that was thought to be useless at the time, but now has uncountable applications.

Listerine.
Originally developed as a surgical antiseptic, marketed as an antiseptic floor and toilet cleaner, a cure for gonorrhea, finally found its market as a cure for chronic halitosis.

Post-its – 3M was trying to invent notes that would stick permanently.

@SuppRatings – 647. So I counted them, which makes you wrong. I win! prizes for me.

Viagra! Countless men around the world owe, uh, a salute to a small company in the Welsh village of Merthyr Tydfil. In 1992, a team of hard-working stiffs discovered the unexpected sex- enhancing power of an angina drug they were testing.

@Austinlad : G&G to your description of the persons you mentioned above…

@ragingloli – All these poor tamagotchis are dead. Famished and parched. And they didn’t leave any offspring. No tamagotchi kittens around anywhere. A fad is not the same as a successful invention, don’t you think?

@Austinlad – and the IT Manager at the plant in Ireland that manufactures it is (maybe was, it was a few years ago now) called Willie Power! Mr. William Power, really!