In 1983/1984 there was a super-secret internal group at Atari that was working on a product that was going to "save the company".
[Note: if you're CEO of a company, don't tell the press that there's a super-secret project to "save the company", because all the other engineering teams will read the papers like everyone else and think "Well, shit, how is the work that we're doing of any value? And why did we read this in the San Jose Mercury News, and not get it from internal channels? This place has terrible management." And they'd be right.]
When it was revealed, it was a telephone. Not a very good telephone, either. They'd been working quite a while, and were well into double-letter board revisions. They really didn't know how to do telephones.
[Note: if you're CEO of a company, don't tell the press that there's a super-secret project to "save the company", because all the other engineering teams will read the papers like everyone else and think "Well, shit, how is the work that we're doing of any value? And why did we read this in the San Jose Mercury News, and not get it from internal channels? This place has terrible management." And they'd be right.]
When it was revealed, it was a telephone. Not a very good telephone, either. They'd been working quite a while, and were well into double-letter board revisions. They really didn't know how to do telephones.