Wed Jul 07, 2010 7:19 am Reply with quote
OK, Tofu - here are some talks that you will like.
Prediction no. 1 (that I selected)
«It will be years - not in my time - before a woman will become Prime Minister.»
Margaret Thatcher, future Prime Minister, October 26th, 1969.
(you may know M. Thatcher as Prime Minister of Great Brittain in the 20th century)
«Man will not fly for 50 years.»
Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneer, to brother Orville, after a disappointing flying experiment, 1901 (their first successful flight was in 1903).
«The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain.»
Martin Luther, German Reformation leader, Table Talk, 1530s(?).
(So, even our great great great great etc. ancestors got it wrong some of the time)
«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.
«There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.»
T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961 (the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).
«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.
(Charlie Chaplin, now what was he famour for again?)
«A man has been arrested in New York for attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people by exhibiting a device which he says will convey the human voice any distance over metallic wires so that it will be heard by the listener at the other end. He calls this instrument a telephone. Well-informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires.»
News item in a New York newspaper, 1868.
«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.
«While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.»
Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926.
Light Bulb
«... good enough for our transatlantic friends ... but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men.»
British Parliamentary Committee, referring to Edison's light bulb, 1878.
«Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress.»
Sir William Siemens, on Edison's light bulb, 1880.
«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.
We here at PSC should be greatful that these people above never got in charge, or we would be staring at a painting on the wall thinking about how we could improve on that without having to start all over again, in the light of a candle or fish oil lamp (whales will all but have died by now) - wondering who would ever see our work and find it worthy of a second glance.
