Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
This week in 1857 – Elisha Otis installed his first elevator in New York City at 488 Broadway.
In 1954 – The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) began commercial production of TV sets that were equipped to receive programs in color. To buy one of those sets, consumers spent upwards of $1,000. Now, that would be about $8,500 today.
1981 – RCA put its SelectaVision videodisc players on the market. Soon, the product was called “the Edsel of the entertainment field” after the Ford Edsel automobile which was a dismal failure. The units cost $500 and the videodiscs about $15 each. The combination failed to catch the consumer’s fancy.
1985 – IBM announced that it was planning to stop making the PCjr consumer-oriented computer. The machine had been expected to dominate the home 
computer market but didn’t quite live up to those expectations. In the 16 months that the PCjr was on the market, only 240,000 units were sold.
And this week in 1990 – Microsoft Windows 3.0 was released. This version offered dramatic performance increases for Windows applications.