FT276


New inventions routinely fail to live up to their promise. Polyester and nylon are cheap and hardwearing, but after the initial enthusiasm people reverted to natural fabrics. Valium and Prozac enjoyed their heydays as panaceas, but lost ground when their disadvantages became apparent. But rarer and more tantalising are Men in White Suits, who come up with an amazing technological breakthrough and then vanish forever.

Sometimes we are left asking “Whatever happened to…” because unexpected limitations or flaws in the original research sink the invention; but many genuine discoveries fail between the laboratory and the marketplace, and the root cause is usually money.