My german professor also told me that wankel rotary engine was killed by the auto industry because of heavy investments made in reciprocating engines by the manufacturers.
General electric, usa, had more than 90% market share in computer numerical control in the seventies and were wiped out by fanuc japan in th early eighties. Jack welch's first job was to wind up the cnc business.
There are many such stories - from the pinnacle of glory to the nadir of shrinking to nothingness.
If IBM had not flouted all its philosophy and practices, the pc revolution would not have taken place.
1. IBM designed and used its own chips and hardware; pc chips made by an outsider (intel)
2. All main frame od and software was developed internally; pc os was obtained from microsoft. Another interesting story - cpm, as an operating system was superior, but as the person who developed it was on holiday and could not be contacted (his wife refused to give contact information). bill gates managed to get the contract (despite many flaws in the os.
3. In pc nothing is from ibm; everything bought and assembled.
4. Even the team working on the pc was shifted out of main ibm building to the other side of the town.
re the wankel,
here in north america, we had mazda rx3 using it. also some german cars too used i think. i thought the issue was fuel efficiency more than anything else. sometimes market too decides.
also, engine factories have come up like mushrooms these past 50 years. i liked the concept of the rotary, and had viewed in my college. was a fascinating piece, in its simplicity. it made sense too, that there is no need for power loss, in converting linear motion to rotary, which is what pistons is all about.
sometimes market forces work in a way to destroy an innovation. for example sony's beta was far ahead of its time, but VHS through skilful marketing and free sharing of technology managed to set aside sony, till sony dumped it.
i am not so sure about 'conspiracy' theories, to set aside breakthrough in technology.
there is an interesting canadian story here. canada had the benefit of attracting the prime and brilliant british aero engineering during and after 2nd world war, and built a thriving aero industry in montreal/toronto.
canada, with our federal govt subsidy, built AVRO Aero. in 1958 it was the most advanced fighter of its time, far ahead of usa or ussr. but it was killed with a viciousness, which is still never fully explained. so severe was the process, that the government ordered every live model to be hammered and broken and sent to the wreckers, so that it could never be re assembled.
even today, 54 years later, its images are as modern as any of today's fighter planes. maybe for once, conspiracy theory holds true. or was it the americans?
Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
what did the then newly unemployed aero engineers do? they all went to usa, and helped usa land a man on the mooon
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