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8.) "X-rays will prove to be a hoax." – Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883

9.) "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 not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903

10.) “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

11.) A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936

12.) "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, on trains, 1864

13.) "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

14.) "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." – -Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), in a talk given to a 1977 World Future Society meeting in Boston

15.) "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

16.) "No, it will make war impossible." – -Hiram Maxim, inventor of the machine gun, in response to the question "Will this gun not make war more terrible?" from Havelock Ellis, an English scientist, 1893

17.) "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

18.) "There will never be a bigger plane built." – - A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.

19.) "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." – Decca Recording Company on declining to sign the Beatles, 1962

20.) "How, 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

21.) "Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." – -Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946

22.) "I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.” — HG Wells, British novelist, in 1901

23.) "It'll be gone by June." – Variety Magazine on Rock n' Roll, 1955

24.) "And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam" – -Newsweek, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s.

25.) "Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure." – -Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison's light bulb, 1880

1 posted on 12/24/2016 5:06:50 AM PST by sodpoodle
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To: sodpoodle

“Donald Trump will never be President.”


2 posted on 12/24/2016 5:13:12 AM PST by HerrBlucher (For the sake of His sorrowful passion have mercy on us and on the whole world.)
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To: sodpoodle

“Trump will never surpass 37%” - Karl Rove


3 posted on 12/24/2016 5:13:38 AM PST by BBB333 (The power of TRUMP compels you!)
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To: sodpoodle
"Reagan doesn't have that presidential look."

Also


4 posted on 12/24/2016 5:15:09 AM PST by a fool in paradise (The COM-Left is saddened by the death of the Communist dictator Fidel Castro. No surprise there.)
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To: sodpoodle

Fun post. The only one I would challenge...if only to a small degree...is: “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” – -Ken Olson

Back in 1977 that was true. Until the software was created to go with it that people could use, there was no reason to have a computer at home.


5 posted on 12/24/2016 5:18:30 AM PST by Lee'sGhost ("Just look at the flowers, Lizzie. Just look at the flowers.")
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To: sodpoodle
"Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

Eventually I did tire of it (and turned it off for over 8 years). For many people "addicted" to it, it's the matter of routine (as with those still holding subscriptions to their daily newspaper).

6 posted on 12/24/2016 5:20:40 AM PST by a fool in paradise (The COM-Left is saddened by the death of the Communist dictator Fidel Castro. No surprise there.)
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To: sodpoodle

“Barack Obama is the smartest man with the highest IQ ever to be elected to the presidency.” — Historian Michael Beschloss on the Don Imus Show, November 2008


7 posted on 12/24/2016 5:20:43 AM PST by .45 Long Colt
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To: sodpoodle

As to #8 l’m still a fan of his temperature scale.


8 posted on 12/24/2016 5:22:36 AM PST by xp38
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To: sodpoodle

“We’re not going to be able to drill our way to two dollar a gallon gasoline”— Obama debating Mitt Romney, 2012.


9 posted on 12/24/2016 5:22:57 AM PST by Hugin (Conservatism without Nationalism is a fraud.)
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To: sodpoodle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard#New_York_Times_editorial

1920, not 1936.

On January 13, 1920, the day after its front-page story about Goddard’s rocket, an unsigned New York Times editorial, in a section entitled “Topics of the Times”, scoffed at the proposal. The article, which bore the title “A Severe Strain on Credulity”, began with apparent approval, but soon went on to cast serious doubt.


10 posted on 12/24/2016 5:23:33 AM PST by Lonesome in Massachussets (Psephomancers for Hillary!)
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To: sodpoodle

bfl


12 posted on 12/24/2016 5:24:46 AM PST by Skooz (Gabba Gabba we accept you we accept you one of us Gabba Gabba we accept you we accept you one of us)
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To: sodpoodle
"It'll be gone by June." – Variety Magazine on Rock n' Roll, 1955

Not that ASCAP and the powers that be didn't try to regain industry control of the "pop" charts.

Folk music (communists), jazz (junkies), poster boy idols ("Bobbys" ruled the day until the Beatles arrived on the charts), they even tried to sell calypso as the "next fad" to replace rock and roll.

But by 1957 the "rock and roll" heard on radio was often ice cream parlor music written by faddish song pluggers, not the gin joint music of 1948-52...

13 posted on 12/24/2016 5:25:35 AM PST by a fool in paradise (The COM-Left is saddened by the death of the Communist dictator Fidel Castro. No surprise there.)
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To: sodpoodle
"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia." – Dr. Dionysius Lardner, 1830

Dr. Lardner was one of the unintentionally hilarious "sages" of his day. His miscalculations and gaffes were many, but he had an amazing ability to ignore reproof and move on to another error. His assertions about early railroads and I.K. Brunel's responses make for entertaining reading.

Mr. niteowl77

19 posted on 12/24/2016 5:33:39 AM PST by niteowl77 (Don't need no Bushes. Don't need no Clintons. Don't need no fooling around.)
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To: sodpoodle

BTTT


21 posted on 12/24/2016 5:37:48 AM PST by jimmyray (there is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse)
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To: sodpoodle
"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

Haha. I recently bought a color laserjet, and specifically looked for the ability to photocopy. On the other hand, I will probably never use the built-in fax feature, since I can just scan and send a pdf copy.

12.) "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, on trains, 1864

My son and I just used one of the "budget" air carriers. Never again, we decided. Certain things are worth paying more for.

23.) "It'll be gone by June." – Variety Magazine on Rock n' Roll, 1955

They didn't specify a year, did they?

22 posted on 12/24/2016 5:38:17 AM PST by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: sodpoodle

Taped phone call between Buddy Holly and Decca Records who didn’t want to release That’ll Be The Day (or anything else he’d recorded) and were dropping his contract but wanted to hold onto (suppress) those songs for 5 years (at which point they would’ve been out of date with the times).

He’s told that he could go anywhere because he was dropped but he couldn’t rerecord those songs and they refused to let him pay for the recording session to buy them back. They were too horrible to use but they might use them later...

He ended up releasing them for Brunswick which avoided the drawn out ownership battle since it was a subsidiary of Decca.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiGlIQE1AXI


27 posted on 12/24/2016 5:43:28 AM PST by a fool in paradise (The COM-Left is saddened by the death of the Communist dictator Fidel Castro. No surprise there.)
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bump


29 posted on 12/24/2016 5:45:35 AM PST by foreverfree
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To: sodpoodle
19.) "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." – Decca Recording Company on declining to sign the Beatles, 1962

They were half right. The Beatles, circa 1962, were lousy. They did improve, however.

30 posted on 12/24/2016 5:45:41 AM PST by Fresh Wind (Hillary: Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass GO. Do not collect 2 billion dollars.)
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To: sodpoodle

#13. I joined DEC in 1977.


32 posted on 12/24/2016 5:48:04 AM PST by NewHampshireDuo
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To: sodpoodle
Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" movie had major cities on both coasts under-water at this point!

Then of course there is the writing of Thomas Malthus on over-population--kookery of the first order.

Also, the "peak oil" crowd has some wild predictions on where we were supposed to be (freezing and starving) by now.


36 posted on 12/24/2016 5:59:17 AM PST by cgbg (Pedophiles--the siren is wailing--incoming!)
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To: sodpoodle
6.) "The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most.” — IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox
IBM wasn't the only company that lacked foresight. Kodak turned down the (eventual) Xerox founder as well.
37 posted on 12/24/2016 6:00:24 AM PST by oh8eleven (RVN '67-'68)
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