Prediction Quotes
“640K ought to be enough [memory] for anybody.”
Bill Gates (1981)
“Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.”
Boston Post editorial (1865)
“Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”
Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London
“I think I may say without contradiction that when the Paris Exhibition closes, electric light will close with it, and no more will be heard of it.”
Erasmus Wilson
Professor at Oxford University, (1878)
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
“The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most.”
IBM to the founders of Xerox (1959)
“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
Irving Fisher
Professor of Economics, Yale University (1929)
“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.”
Ken Olson, President
Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
“No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free.”
King William I of Prussia, 1864, on hearing of the invention of trains
“The average American family hasn't time for television.”
New York Times, 1939
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
Thomas Watson, Chairman, IBM, 1949
“Man will not fly for 50 years.”
Wilbur Wright, aviation pioneer, 1901 (two years later his brother Orville made the first manned flight)
“The proposition, that the sun is the centre and does not revolve about the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in theology and heretical.”
The Inquisition, on Galileo's proposals
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