"Man
will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances."
-- Dr. Lee DeForest, Inventor of TV
"The
bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosive." --
Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project
"There
is no likehood man can ever tap the power of the atom." -- Robert
Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923
"Computers
in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics,
forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
"I
think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas
Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"I
have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best
people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out
the year." -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall,
1957
"But
what ... is it good for?" -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems
Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
"640K
ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981 (Today the optimum
memory is 128 MB.)
"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.
"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 in the 1920s.
"We
don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." -- Decca
Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
"Heavier-than-air
flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal
Society, 1895.
"So
we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with
some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it
to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And
they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we
don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" -- Apple Computer
Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and
Steve Wozniak's personal computer.
"Professor
Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to
have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack
the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1921 New York
Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
"Drill
for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're
crazy." -- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to
drill for oil in 1859.
"Airplanes
are interesting toys but of no military value." -- Marechal Ferdinand
Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
"Everything
that can be invented has been invented." -- Charles H. Duell,
Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
"There
is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson,
president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
