Funny, Inaccurate Predictions
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, IBM, 1943
:-o
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olsen, Digital Equipment Corp, 1977
:-o
"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 Memo, 1876
:-o
"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not.
We have plenty of messenger boys."
- Sir William Preece, British Post Office, 1876
:-o
"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 the radio, 1920s
:-o
"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible,
commercially and financially it is an impossibility."
- Lee DeForest, inventor
:-o
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
:-o
"It will be years - not in my time -
before a woman will become Prime Minister."
- Margaret Thatcher, 1974
:-o
"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
:-o
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
:-o
"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)
:-o
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
- Irving Fisher, Professor, Yale University, 1929
