"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, 1977
"If anything remains more or less unchanged, it will be the role of women."
-- David Riesman, conservative American social scientist, 1967
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out anyway."
-- President of Decca Records, rejecting The Beatles after an audition, 1962
"Transmission of documents via telephone wires is possible in principle, but the apparatus required is so expensive that it will never become
a practical proposition."
-- Dennis Gabor, British physicist and author of Inventing the Future, 1962
"There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to
provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States."
-- T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, 1961
(the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965)
"The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most."
-- IBM , to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 1959
"We will bury you."
-- Nikita Kruschev, Soviet Premier, predicting Soviet communism will win over
U.S. capitalism, 1958
"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
"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, 1957
"Space travel is utter bilge."
-- Dr. Richard van der Reit Wooley, UK space advisor to the government, 1956
(Sputnik orbited the Earth the following year)
"You ain't going nowhere, son. You ought to go back to driving a truck."
-- Jim Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, in firing Elvis Presley after a performance, 1954
"If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one."
-- W.C. Heuper, National Cancer Institute, 1954
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
-- Popular Mechanics, "predicting" the relentless march of technology, 1949
"Television won't last. It's a flash in the pan."
-- Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948
"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
"You better learn secretarial work or else get married."
-- Director of the Blue Book Modeling Agency, advising Marilyn Monroe, 1944
"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."
-- William D. Leahy, U.S. Admiral, advising President Truman on atomic
weaponry, 1944
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"... 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)
"Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous."
-- Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, 1939
"A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere."
-- New York Times, 1936
"The energy produced by 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."
-- Ernst Rutherford, New Zealand physicist, 1933
"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean the atom would have to be shattered at will."
-- Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist, 1932
"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
-- Irving Fisher, Yale University Professor of Economics, 1929
(two weeks later, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression started)
"There is no likelihood that man can ever tap the power of the atom. The glib supposition of utilizing atomic energy when our coal has run out is a completely unscientific Utopian dream, a childish bug-a-boo."
-- Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, 1928
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
-- H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, maker of silent movies, 1927
"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming."
-- Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926
"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
-- Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, 1923
"The radio craze will die out in time."
-- Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1922
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
-- David Sarnoff, American radio pioneer, 1921
"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
-- New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work, 1921
(note that the day after Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969, the New York
Times printed a short boxed item on page 2. It read in full:
"Errata: It has now been conclusively demonstrated that a rocket ship can
travel through the vacuum of space. The Times sincerely regrets the error.")
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay
for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in radio, 1920s
"Taking the best left-handed pitcher in baseball and converting him into a right fielder is one of the dumbest things I ever heard."
-- Tris Speaker, baseball expert, talking about Babe Ruth, 1919
"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
"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 ..."
-- U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer, for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company, 1913
"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
"I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years. Two years later we ourselves made flights. This demonstration of my impotence as a prophet gave me such a shock that ever since I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions."
-- Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneer, speech to the Aero Club of France, 1908
"Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote."
-- Grover Cleveland, U.S. President, 1905
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1904(?)
"The horse is here to stay, the automobile is only a fad."
-- Advice of President of Michigan Savings Bank to Horace Rackham, lawyer for
Henry Ford, 1903
(Rackham ignored the advice and invested $5000 in Ford stock, selling it later
for $12.5 million)
"Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible."
-- Simon Newcomb, Canadian-born American astronomer, 1902
"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
"If God had intended that man should fly, he would have given him wings."
-- Widely attributed to George W. Melville, chief engineer of the U.S. Navy, 1900
"The amount of misguided ingenuity which has been expended on these two problems of submarine and aerial navigation during the nineteenth century will offer one of the most curious and interesting studies to the future historian of technologic progress."
-- George Sutherland, American lawyer and author of 20th Century Inventions, 1900
"Radio has no future."
-- Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1897
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
-- Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895
"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."
-- 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
"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been
discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."
-- Albert. A. Michelson, German-born American physicist, 1894
"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)
"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy."
-- Simon Newcomb, Canadian-born American astronomer, 1888
"The phonograph has no commercial value at all."
-- Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1880s
"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
"... good enough for our transatlantic friends ... but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men."
-- British Parliamentary Committee, on Edison's light bulb, 1878
"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have
plenty of messenger boys."
-- Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878
"This telephone has too many shortcomings to be considered as a means of communication. The device is of inherently no value to us."
-- Western Union internal memo, 1876
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion
of the wise and humane surgeon".
-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon Extraordinary to
Queen Victoria, 1873
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
-- Pierre Pachet, British surgeon, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
"It's a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?"
R-- utherford B. Hayes, U.S. President, after a demonstration of Alexander Bell's telephone, 1872
"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
"Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value."
-- Boston Post, 1865
"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 assengers, 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."
-- Martin Van Buren, Governor of New York, 1865(?)
"No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free."
-- King William I of Prussia, on hearing of the invention of trains, 1864
"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're
crazy."
-- Drillers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil, 1859
"I watched his countenance closely, to see if he was not deranged ... and I was assured by other senators after he left the room that they had no confidence in it."
U.S. Senator Smith of Indiana, after witnessing a demonstration of Samuel Morses's telegraph, 1842
"The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it...knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient."
-- Dr. Alfred Velpeau, French surgeon, 1839
"Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."
-- Dionysius Lardner, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London, and author of The Steam Engine Explained and Illustrated, 1830s
"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
"What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte, when told of Robert Fulton's steamboat, 1800s
"I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones fell from the sky."
-- Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, on hearing reports of meteorites, 1790s(?)
"The view that the sun stands motionless at the center of the universe is
foolish, philosophically false, utterly heretical, because contrary to Holy Scripture. The view that the earth is not the center of the universe and even has a daily rotation is philosophically false, and at least an erroneous belief."
-- Holy Office, Roman Catholic Church, ridiculing the scientific analysis that the Earth orbited the Sun in edict of March 5, 1616
"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(?)
"...so many centuries after the Creation it is unlikely that anyone could find
hitherto unknown lands of any value."
-- Committee advising King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain regarding a proposal by Christopher Columbus, 1486 |
