It depends what you mean by "flop" — yes, I know they mean commercial flop — but several of these have had great effects, even though money for the original com

It depends what you mean by "flop" — yes, I know they mean commercial flop — but several of these have had great effects, even though money for the original companies wasn't among them: Xerox Alto: I don't think I need to mention all the stuff developed in PARC that is now utterly ubiquitous. Apple Lisa: A big influence on her more famous brother, the Macintosh. Sinclair QL: Helped Linus Torvalds to decide to target Linux initially at the x86. NeXT: Spawned OS X ; kept Steve Jobs in the computer industry until his return to Apple.