Major predictive fails

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Winston

Winston

Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.”
- Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service.
(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” -
David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” - Western Union internal memo, 1876.

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” - Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

“The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” - Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” - Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

“The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat by the number of vacuum tubes required.” - Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” - Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

“Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” - Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” - Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, France .

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy.” - Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

“We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” - Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

“I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” - Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in “Gone With The Wind.”

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.” - Bill Gates, 1981

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

“Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.” - Dr. Lee DeForest, “Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television.”
 
Quotes from Lord Kelvin (he was very clever but did get a few things wrong!)

"We know that light is propagated like sound through pressure and motion."

"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”



I agree with his opinion on Laplace transforms. I hated them at school:
"There can be but one opinion as to the beauty and utility of this analysis of Laplace; but the manner in which it has been hitherto presented has seemed repulsive to the ablest mathematicians, and difficult to ordinary mathematical students."

His feelings towards quarternions is similarly amusing:
"Quaternions came from Hamilton after his really good work had been done; and though beautifully ingenious, have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way, including Maxwell."
 
Winston said:


“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
Click to expand...

This one, at least, is apocryphal. From this document
Q. Did Thomas Watson say in the 1950s that he foresaw a market potential for only five​
electronic computers?

​
A. We believe the statement that you attribute to Thomas Watson is a misunderstanding of remarks made at IBM’s annual stockholders meeting on April 28, 1953. In referring specifically and only to the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine -- which had been introduced the year before as the company’s first production computer designed for scientific calculations -- Thomas Watson, Jr., told stockholders that “IBM had developed a paper plan for such a machine and took this paper plan across the country to some 20 concerns that we thought could use such a machine. I would like to tell you that the machine rents for between $12,000 and $18,000 a month, so it was not the type of thing that could be sold from place to place. But, as a result of our trip, on which we expected to get orders for five machines, we came home with orders for 18.”​



OverTheTop said:
Quotes from Lord Kelvin (he was very clever but did get a few things wrong!)

"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement."
Click to expand...

This one reminds me of Asimov's Relativity of Wrong essay. But I don't think Lord Kelvin said it. Here is a web site that claims it is a misattribution. And, since it is on the internet, it must be true.

OverTheTop said:
"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."
Click to expand...

Yes, he does appear to have said that -- or words to that effect. Röntgen turned him around on that one. The X-ray image of Lord Kelvin's Hand is here

https://pictures.royalsociety.org/image-rs-9842
 
Last edited:
“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” - Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
Click to expand...

The date on this one caught my attention. It was published just about the time that Shockley, Bardeen, Brattain, et. al. would have been demonstrating germanium transistors at Bell Labs. According to google the first silicon transistors were sold by TI, in 1954

When I googled the quoted misprediction -- the first hit was this article.

From which:
The actual quotation, from the March 1949 issue of Popular Mechanics, goes like this: "Where a calculator like ENIAC today is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1½ tons."

It reads a bit differently in context, no? Written at the time when computers were still huge mechanical/electrical contraptions, the article provided a pretty solid overview of the infant technology. Of course, what the article did not anticipate were two of the most pivotal inventions in human history: the transistor, which came into widespread use in the mid-1950s, and the integrated circuit, or microchip, which intensified the march toward miniaturization a decade later. The first fully transistorized computer, the IBM 608, hit the market in late 1957.​

It weighed 1.2 tons.​


“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” - Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Click to expand...

This one also seems pretty unlikely, since DEC was building microcomputers in the 1970s and 1977 is, suspiciously, the year that a mess of Z80 and 6502 machine started showing up in department stores. According to SNOPES, Ken Olson wasn't wrong about 1977. He was wrong about 2018. The thing he was saying no one would want was house full of networked appliances under centralized computer control.
 
Mushtang said:
Not verifiable and I seriously doubt he ever said it. Here's a good article about it.
Click to expand...

This is fun.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.
Click to expand...

This one is falsified HERE

It is an interesting list. I wonder why lists like these are popular?

“The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat by the number of vacuum tubes required.” - Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University
Click to expand...
I thought maybe the attribution had been truncated, but I got five pages deep in a google search and never saw any source other than "Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University.

Even it is a real quote from some long-ago NYU EE professor, it probably belongs in the same class as the Popular Mechanics quote. since it mentions vacuum tubes.

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” - Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, France .
Click to expand...
This was apparently said in 1910 or 1911. It was not a prediction. It was an estimate of the state of aviation at the time.
 
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Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

Somehow seems VERY relevant today.
 
Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
Click to expand...
This one serves as a pretty good example of how Google's page rank algorithm acts to distort and obscure.

I didn't go more than 5 pages deep before the results were just gibberish. In the first five pages I did not find any reference to this Pierre Pachet other than the one quote. Mostly in various versions of the list Winston posted. Also, weirdly, on alternative medicine and anti-vaccination web sites.

A cursory search of articles about the life of Louis Pasteur yields no incidences of the name "Pachet".

I could dig deeper, if I had time, but the fact that I'd have to dig deeper reveals the distortion. Whoever Pierre Pachet was in his day, to a casual -- ore even moderately determined -- reader today he appears to be an eminent medical expert of the late 19th century.

His name is amplified by the link-to-link echo chamber of google. For all I was able to find, this quote might have been drawn from a letter to the editor of the Toulouse Penny-Saver Gazette.
 

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