Over many decades, not to mention centuries, there have been many predictions and comments about new inventions that, when viewed with the benefit of hindsight, make us smile. Not only that, but they prove that the belief in man's infallibility is just a mere myth! Occasionally, just like everyone else, I have been tempted to dismiss something as a passing fad or promote something which later turned out to be a damp squib. It's good to know that I'm in the most illustrious company when I make such errors!
Anyway, here are a few which I've taken from an article by David Servant in the current issue of The Voice Christian News & Views magazine. If you want to read the whole article then simply use the link on the right-hand side of this blog and register online (it's absolutely FREE!).
"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
"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
"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
"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
"Television won't last. It's a flash in the pan." -- Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"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
"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)
"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
"The radio craze will die out in time." -- Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1922
"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)
"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)
"Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever." -- Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1889
"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
"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?" -- Rutherford 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
"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 passengers, 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(?)
"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 for his project to drill for oil, 1859
"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, 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
"The view that the sun stands motionless at the centre of the universe is foolish, philosophically false, utterly heretical, because contrary to Holy Scripture. The view that the earth is not the centre 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
"...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
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