Events
Nikita Krushchev,
Soviet Premier, predicting Soviet communism will win over U.S.
capitalism, 1958.
«Everything that
can be invented has been invented.»
Charles H. Duell,
an official at the US
patent office, 1899.
Charles Darwin, in
the foreword to his book, The Origin of Species, 1869.
«If anything
remains more or less unchanged, it will be the role of women.»
David Riesman,
conservative American social scientist, 1967.
«It will be gone by
June.»
Variety,
passing judgement on rock 'n roll in 1955.
«Democracy will be
dead by 1950.»
John
Langdon-Davies, A Short History of The Future, 1936.
«A short-lived
satirical pulp.»
«And for the
tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam»
Newsweek, predicting
popular holidays for the late 1960s.
«Four or five
frigates will do the business without any military force.»
British prime
minister Lord North, on dealing with the rebellious American colonies,
1774.
«In all likelihood
world inflation is over.»
«This antitrust
thing will blow over.»
Bill Gates, founder
of Microsoft.
«Remote shopping,
while entirely feasible, will flop - because women like to get out of the
house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds.»
TIME, 1966, in
one sentence writing off e-commerce long before anyone had ever heard of
it.
«They couldn't hit
an elephant at this distance»
«Our country has
deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive
and far reaching in purpose».
Herbert Hoover, on
Prohibition, 1928.
«It will be years - not
in my time - before a woman will become Prime Minister.»
Margaret Thatcher,
future Prime Minister, October 26th, 1969.
«Read my
lips: NO NEW TAXES.»
«You will be home
before the leaves have fallen from the trees.»
Kaiser Wilhelm, to
the German troops, August 1914.
«This is the second
time in our history that there has come back from Germany
to Downing Street peace with honor. I
believe it is peace for our time.»
Neville
Chamberlain, British Prime Minister, September 30th, 1938.
«That virus is a
pussycat.»
«The case is a
loser.»
Johnnie
Cochran, on soon-to-be client O.J.'s chances of winning, 1994.
«Reagan doesn't
have that presidential look.»
United Artists
Executive, rejecting Reagan as lead in 1964 film The Best Man.
«Capitalist
production begets, with the inexorability of a law of nature, its own
negation.»
«Sensible and
responsible women do not want to vote.»
Grover Cleveland, U.S.
President, 1905.
«Man will not
fly for 50 years.»
Wilbur Wright,
American aviation pioneer, to brother Orville, after a disappointing
flying experiment, 1901 (their first successful flight was in 1903).
«I am tired of
all this sort of thing called science here... We have spent millions in
that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be
stopped.»
Simon Cameron, U.S.
Senator, on the Smithsonian Institute, 1901.
Hermann Goering,
Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, 1942.
«With over fifteen
types of foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry
isn't likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself.»
Business Week,
August 2, 1968.
«The multitude of
books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing; every one
must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a
name, others for the sake of mere gain.»
Martin Luther,
German Reformation leader, Table Talk, 1530s(?).
Lt. Joseph Ives,
after visiting the Grand Canyon in
1861.
«There is no doubt
that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction.
As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along
with the people who have produced them and who guard them.»
General Tommy
Franks, March 22nd, 2003.
Light Bulb
«... good enough
for our transatlantic friends ... but unworthy of the attention of
practical or scientific men.»
«Such startling
announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of
science and mischievous to its true progress.»
Sir William
Siemens, on Edison's light bulb, 1880.
«Everyone
acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure.»
Henry Morton,
president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison's
light bulb, 1880.
Automobiles
«The horse is here
to stay but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad.»
«That the
automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is
suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical
nature have been introduced.»
Scientific
American, Jan. 2 edition, 1909.
«The ordinary
"horseless carriage" is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and
although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of
course, come into as common use as the bicycle.»
Literary Digest,
1899.
Airplanes
«Flight
by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic)
and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.»
«Heavier-than-air flying
machines are impossible.»
Lord Kelvin,
British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society,
1895.
«It is apparent to
me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were
thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been
exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.»
Thomas Edison,
American inventor, 1895.
«Airplanes are
interesting toys but of no military value.»
Marechal Ferdinand
Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1904.
«There
will never be a bigger plane built.»
A Boeing engineer,
after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.
Computers
«Where a calculator
on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30
tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1.5 tons.»
«There is no
reason anyone would want a computer in their home.»
Ken Olson,
president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big
business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.
«I have traveled
the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I
can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the
year.»
The editor in
charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.
«But what... is it
good for?»
IBM executive
Robert Lloyd, speaking in 1968 microprocessor, the heart of today's
computers.
Radio
«Radio has no
future.»
«The wireless music
box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message
sent to no one in particular?»
Associates of David
Sarnoff responding to the latter's call for investment in the radio in
1921.
«Lee DeForest has
said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to
transmit the human voice across the Atlantic
before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading
statements, the misguided public ... has been persuaded to purchase stock in
his company ...»
a U.S. District
Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock
fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.
Space Travel
«There is
practically no chance communications space satellites will be used
to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service
inside the United States.»
«Space travel is utter
bilge.»
Richard Van Der
Riet Woolley, upon assuming the post of Astronomer Royal in 1956.
«Space travel is
bunk.»
Sir Harold Spencer
Jones, Astronomer Royal of the UK,
1957 (two weeks later Sputnik orbited the Earth).
«To place a
man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling
gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make
scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all
that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to
say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all
future advances.»
Lee DeForest,
American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926
Rockets
«We stand on the
threshold of rocket mail.»
«... too
far-fetched to be considered.»
Editor of
Scientific American, in a letter to Robert Goddard about Goddard's idea of a
rocket-accelerated airplane bomb, 1940 (German V2 missiles came down on London 3 years
later).
«A rocket will never
be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere.»
New York Times,
1936.
Atomic
and Nuclear Power
«The basic
questions of design, material and shielding, in combining a nuclear
reactor with a home boiler and cooling unit, no longer are problems... The system
would heat and cool a home, provide unlimited household hot water, and melt the
snow from sidewalks and driveways. All that could be done for six years on a
single charge of fissionable material costing about $300.»
«Nuclear-powered
vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.»
Alex Lewyt,
president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times
in 1955.
«That is
the biggest fool thing we have ever done [research on]... The
bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.»
Admiral William D.
Leahy, U.S. Admiral working in the U.S. Atomic Bomb Project, advising President
Truman on atomic weaponry, 1944.
«Atomic energy might
be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce
anything very much more dangerous.»
«The energy
produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing.
Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is
talking moonshine.»
Ernest Rutherford,
shortly after splitting the atom for the first time.
«There is not
the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would
mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.»
Albert Einstein,
1932.
«There is no
likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.»
Robert Millikan,
American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, 1923.
Films
H. M. Warner,
co-founder of Warner Brothers, 1927.
«The cinema is
little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is
flesh and blood on the stage.»
Charlie Chaplin,
actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916.
Telephone/Telegraph
«This 'telephone'
has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of
communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.»
A memo at Western Union, 1878 (or 1876).
Sir William Preece,
Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.
«It's a great
invention but who would want to use it anyway?»
Rutherford B.
Hayes, U.S. President, after a demonstration of Alexander Bell's telephone,
1876.
«A man has
been arrested in New York for
attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people by
exhibiting a device which he says will convey the human voice any
distance over metallic wires so that it will be heard by the listener at
the other end. He calls this instrument a telephone. Well-informed people
know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires.»
News item in
a New York
newspaper, 1868.
Television
«Television won't
last. It's a flash in the pan.»
«Television won't
last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood
box every night.»
Darryl Zanuck,
movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.
«While
theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and
financially it is an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little
time dreaming.»
Lee DeForest,
American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926.
Railroads
«Dear Mr.
President: The canal system of this country is being threatened by a new
form of transportation known as 'railroads' ... As you may well know, Mr.
President, 'railroad' carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15
miles per hour by 'engines' which, in addition to endangering life and
limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting
fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and
children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel
at such breakneck speed.»
«What can be
more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives
traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?»
The Quarterly
Review, March edition, 1825.
«Rail travel at
high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would
die of asphyxia.»
Dr Dionysys Larder
(1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College
London.
Other Technology
Dennis Gabor,
British physicist and author of Inventing the Future, 1962.
«[By 1985],
machines will be capable of doing any work Man can do.»
Herbert A. Simon,
of Carnegie Mellon University
- considered to be a founder of the field of artificial intelligence - speaking
in 1965.
IBM, to the
eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough
to justify production, 1959.
«I must confess
that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything
but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.»
HG Wells, British
novelist, in 1901.
«X-rays will
prove to be a hoax.»
Lord Kelvin,
President of the Royal Society, 1883.
«Very interesting
Whittle, my boy, but it will never work.»
«The idea
that cavalry will be replaced by these iron coaches is absurd. It is
little short of treasonous.»
Comment of
Aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Haig, at tank demonstration, 1916.
«Caterpillar
landships are idiotic and useless. Those officers and men are wasting their
time and are not pulling their proper weight in the war.»
Fourth Lord of the
British Admiralty, 1915.
Napoleon Bonaparte,
when told of Robert Fulton's steamboat, 1800s.
«The phonograph
has no commercial value at all.»
Thomas Edison,
American inventor, 1880s.
«If I had thought
about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of
examples that said 'you can't do this'.»
«Fooling around
with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.»
Thomas Edison,
American inventor, 1889 (Edison often
ridiculed the arguments of competitor George Westinghouse for AC power).
Source :
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