Originally Posted by
deubster
In a similar vein, AT&T's Bell Labs developed the solid state transistor, couldn't figure out what to do with it (they were thinking hearing aids), gave it away for next to nothing to Sony, which spurred Japan's entire economy into the upper echelon for decades.
Not to mention quite a few American companies that are/were US household names; Texas Instruments was built on it, and IBM was a very early adopter.
A shame, as I had both an Osborne 1 and an Osborne Executive, and liked them very much.
Those were cut-throat days, and technologically there were others ready to eat their lunch even had the launch gone better, plus the IBM clone movement was about to take off.