When Technology Predictions Go Wrong..... X-rays: a certain hoax X-ray ‘will prove to be a hoax’ said the president of the royal society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. The telephone, just too American In 1878, Sir William Preece, the chief engineer of the British Post Office, said: "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." But with nearly 80 million handsets in Britain alone - that's almost two per adult - we've never needed them more. Television - boring 20th century Fox founder Darryl Zanuck thought we’d get bored with television. 640KB of memory - all you need on a PC We’d never need more than 640K memory – Bill Gates (Though I have a confusion about it) iPod: certain failure Alan Sugar famously predicted that iPod would fail! The Boeing 247 - unbeatably big In 1933, a Boeing 247 capable of holding 10 people took flight. One unnamed engineer proudly declared: "There will never be a bigger plane built." True, if you discount the 727, 737, 747, and hundreds of other carriers, commercial or military. Perhaps keeping his name secret was the brightest idea that engineer had. The end of spam! Bill Gates said we’d be spam-free by 2006, but the spam, junk and dodgy product torrent continues. Computers are not really for home use Digital Equipment Corp, better known as DEC, has been a pioneer of the US computer industry. But what gripped its co-founder Ken Olsen when he argued, in 1977, that "there is no reason for any individual to have a computer at his home". More than a billion people now have home computers. Nuclear vacuum cleaning Nuclear vacuum cleaners (!!!) weren’t the explosive success that Alex Lewyt predicted.
The end of spam! Bill Gates said we’d be spam-free by 2006, but the spam, junk and dodgy product torrent continues. Hahahhaha Microsoft can never get rid of Spams.
Nuclear vacuum cleaning Nuclear vacuum cleaners (!!!) weren’t the explosive success that Alex Lewyt predicted. haha.. how was that possible... LOL!
Here is more... “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.†— New York Times, 1936. “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. “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.†— Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895. “The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.†— Ernest Rutherford, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time. “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.†— Albert Einstein, 1932 “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 “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad.†— The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903 “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 Western Union, 1878 (or 1876). “When the Paris Exhibition [of 1878] closes, electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of it.†- Oxford professor Erasmus Wilson “Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.†— Dr Dionysys Larder (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London. “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?†— Associates of David Sarnoff responding to the latter’s call for investment in the radio in 1921. Source: http://listverse.com/
Lol from where you are collecting all these goodies . But thanks for sharing them , These guys must have killed many people business by giving such predictions .