What If We Had Listened To These Guys
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Many experts throughout history have made incorrect predictions about emerging technologies and their impact. They rejected or doubted inventions like the automobile, airplane, television, computer and achievements like landing on the moon. Many also expressed skepticism about future events like the Great Depression. Their predictions show how difficult it can be to foresee the future impact of new inventions and technologies.
What If We Had Listened To These Guys
- 2. What if we had listened to these guys?
- 3. Newsweek January 27, 1997
- 4. “ We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on their way out.” Decca Records Rejecting the Beatles, 1962
- 5. “ Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” Harry M. Warner Warner Brothers, 1927
- 6. “ Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Charles H. Duell, U.S. commissioner of patents
- 7. “ For the majority of people, the use of tobacco has a beneficial effect.” Dr. Ian G. MacDonald Los Angeles surgeon, quoted in Newsweek, Nov. 18, 1963
- 8. “ Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20 th Century Fox
- 9. “ Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” Irving Fischer professor of economics Yale University, Oct. 17, 1929
- 10. “ I have no political ambitions for myself or my children.” Joseph P. Kennedy, 1936
- 11. “ Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” Marshal Ferdinand Foch French Military Strategist & Future World War I commander, 1911
- 12. “ Nobody fears that a Japanese fleet could deal an unexpected blow on our Pacific possessions…Radio makes surprise impossible.” Joseph Daniels former U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Oct. 16, 1922
- 13. “ Believe me, Germany is unable to wage war.” Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Aug. 1, 1934
- 14. “ Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.” Dr. Lee DeForest inventor of the Audion tube and a father of radio, February 25, 1967
- 15. “ Computers in the future may… only weigh 1.5 tons” Popular Mechanics forecasting the development of computer technology, 1949
- 16. “ The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty– a fad.” A president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Horace Rackham (Henry Ford’s Lawyer) not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903. Rackham ignored the advice, bought $5000.00 worth of stock and sold it in several years for $12.5 million.
- 17. “ What use could this company make of an electrical toy?” Western Union President William Orton, rejecting Alexander Graham Bell’s offer to sell his telephone company to Western Union for $100,000
- 18. “ I must confess that my imagination…refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.” H. G. Wells British Novelist, 1901
- 19. “ The election of Hoover…should result in continued prosperity for 1929.” Roger W. Babson, American financial statistician and founder of the Babson Institute, Sept. 17, 1928
- 20. “ There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.” Kenneth Olsen, president and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
- 21. “ I confess in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years…Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions.” Wilbur Wright, U.S. aviation pioneer, 1908