Again - it is great fun to think of what concepts of today that might be getting the cold shoulder from so-called experts, but are going to be reality in the future? Teleportation? Food synthesizers? Time Travel? Climate Change? Designer babies? Human cloning? Self-replicating Nanobytes? Wireless electricity? Hmmm...
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." - Western Union internal memo, 1876
"What use could this company make of an electrical toy?"Western Union president William Orton, rejecting Bell’s offer to sell his struggling telephone company for $100,000.
"The horse is here to stay, but the auto is only a novelty -- a fad." - President of the Michigan Savings Bank, 1903
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." - Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895
"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 in the 1920's
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"- Harry M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
"TV won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first 6 months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."- Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, 1946
"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 perhaps weigh 1-1/2 tons."- Popular Mechanics, 1949
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. 1977
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." - Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction" - Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872.
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1 comment:
Great post! It is amazing how far we've come in such a short time.
A friend in the computer industry told me back in the mid-1980s that "someday we will be wearing our computer, with a hand-held control." Unfortunately, he didn't live to see the Apple iPhone, but he had the right idea way back when.
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