Also
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
“Donald Trump will never be President.”
“Trump will never surpass 37%” - Karl Rove
Also
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.
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).
“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
As to #8 l’m still a fan of his temperature scale.
“We’re not going to be able to drill our way to two dollar a gallon gasoline”— Obama debating Mitt Romney, 2012.
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.
bfl
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...
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
BTTT
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?
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
bump
They were half right. The Beatles, circa 1962, were lousy. They did improve, however.
#13. I joined DEC in 1977.