''The Bomb will never go off, I speak
as an expert in explosives."
- - Admiral William
Leahy , US Atomic Bomb Project
"There is no likelihood 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 travelled 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
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.
"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.)
"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling
on his face and not Gary Cooper"
-- Gary Cooper on his
decision not to take the leading role in
"Gone With The Wind."
"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.
"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the
experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do
this"
- - Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique
adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.
"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.
"Stocks have reached
what looks like a
permanently high plateau."
- - Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale
University , 1929.
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no
military value"
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy,
Ecole Superieure de Guerre , France .
"Everything that can be invented has been
invented"
-- Charles H.
Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.
"The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take
all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by
the number
of vacuum tubes required."
-- Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University
"I don't know what use any one could find
for a machine that would make copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a
feasible business by itself."
-- the head of IBM, refusing to back the idea, forcing
the inventor to found Xerox.
"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.
And
last but not least...
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in
their home."
-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment
Corp., 1977
