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This Week in Tech History: Introduction (and Failure) of RCA Videodiscs

On this edition of "This Week in Tech History", Chris reminds us of the introduction of the RCA Selectavision videodisc format, that didn't last long. He also tells us of the "hatching" of one of the world's most popular social media networks.

This week in 1857 – Elisha Otis installed his first elevator at 488 Broadway in New York City.

1981 – RCA put its Selectavision laser disc players on the market. Soon, the product was called “the Edsel of the entertainment field.” – After the Ford Edsel automobile that failed miserably. The units cost $500 and the videodiscs about $15 each. The units 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 about 240,000 units were sold.

1990 – Microsoft Windows 3.0 was released. This version offered dramatic performance increases for Windows applications.

2001 – The Russian Mir space station was disposed of, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.

And this week in 2006 – The social media site Twitter is founded. Now, after only 11 years, the popular social media platform has over 319 million active users

Written by Chris Graveline

Chris has covered consumer technology for over 20 years. He is the host of This Week in Tech History as well as a regular co-host on "Into Tomorrow with Dave Graveline" and our Technical Director.

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