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Throughout history man has been making predictions of the future. With the advent of technology, the predictions moved away from religious topics to scientific and technological. Unfortunately for the speakers,many of these failed predictions have been recorded for all future generations to laugh at. Here is a selectionof the 30 best.Predictions 1 - 10
1.
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman andfounder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against thePC in 1977.
2.
“We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” — Bill Gates
3.
“Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit thehuman voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleadingstatements, 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 mailfor his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.
4.
“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, in 1961(the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).
5.
“To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moonwhere the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all thatconstitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage willnever occur regardless of all future advances.” — Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of thevacuum tube, in 1926
6.
“A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936.
7.
“Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” -Simon Newcomb; The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later.
8.
“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.
9.
“There will never be a bigger plane built.” — A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twinengine plane that holds ten people
10.
“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.Predictions 11 - 20
11.
“This is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert inexplosives.” — Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navyduring World War II, advising President Truman on the atomic bomb, 1945.[6] Leahy admitted the error fiveyears later in his memoirs
12.
“The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expectsa source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.” — Ernest Rutherford, shortlyafter splitting the atom for the first time.
13.
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that theatom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932
14.
“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
15.
“The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad.” — The president of the MichiganSavings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor
16.
“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.
17.
“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).
18.
“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.
19.
“I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocatingits crew and floundering at sea.” — HG Wells, British novelist, in 1901.
20.
“X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883.
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