#9 Handwriting Recognition

Year it was supposed to blow: 1988- 1999

Handwriting recognition is the ability of the computing devise to make out intelligible handwriting from sources such as paper or touch screens. It was introduced as early in late 80’s with Apple’s Newton platform.

But now, people prefer either talk to their phone via apps like Siri or Hangout than fuzzily scribble on to the screen, and then wait  for the phone, to make out words from it. It all seems too antique.

#8 Bubble Memory

Year it was supposed to blow: 70s

It is the type of non volatile memory where the digitized data is stored on to a thin film of magnetic material. The little domains storing one bit of data are bubbles. Invented by Andrew Bobeck, and immediately hailed to be the next best thing in storage technology, large companies like Bell, Konami, and Intel found it revolutionizing and invested in the research.

However, with the advent of hard disks which offered more storage, more data transfer speed, and its cheap cost of production-- the bubbles bursted.