THE CAT WHO DIDN’T GET THE CREAM

A lesser-known failure, the CueCat was a consumer barcode scanner you attached to your PC. The inventors of this curious device thought swathes of consumers were exhausted from typing the web addresses of companies they read about into their browsers, so they developed it to read barcodes printed in their favourite mags that took them straight to the website. Turns out they weren’t, and the CueCat was consigned to the scrapheap of history.