http://www.2spare.com/item_50221.aspx
Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future
«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. Newcomb was not impressed.
«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.
«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.
«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).
«
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
«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.
«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
**, 1878 (or 1876).
«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.
«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.