“Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure.”
-Henry Morton, President of the Stevens Institute of Technology, referring to Edison’s light bulb, New York Herald, December 18,1879

“The ordinary ‘horseless carriage’ is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.”
-Literary Digest, 1899

“The actual building of roads devoted to motor cars is not for the near future, in spite of many rumours to that effect.”
-Harper’s Weekly, 1902

“Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.”
– Simon Newcomb, Physicist and Director of the US Naval Observatory, 1902

“While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially, I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.”
-Lee De Forest, Inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926

“It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology.”
-John Van Neumann, inventor, mathematician, physicist and computer scientist, 1949

“We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere.”
-Auguste Comte regarding the study of stars, The Positive Philosophy, 1842

“Rocks don’t fall from the sky.”
-The French Academy of Sciences regarding meteors, 1700’s

“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, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1934

“Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.”
-Thomas Alva Edison, 1889

“…obvious limitations of his device, which is hardly more than a toy.”
-Western Union board of directors declining the patent rights to Bell’s telephone, 1876

“A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.”
-The New York Times, January 13, 1920

“To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to Earth, all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.”
-Lee De Forest, February 25, 1957

“The machine gun will not bring about a revolution in tactics. It will accomplish no real change in the art of war. It is not, in the broad sense of the word, a new arm or a new power.”
-The Saturday Review, 1870

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
-Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

“Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop – because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds.”
-TIME Magazine, 1966

“You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are but a youth, and he has been a warrior from his youth.”
-King Saul to David regarding Goliath, 1 Samuel 17:33, approx. 1023BC

“The abdomen, the chest and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.”
Sir John Eric Erichsen, Surgeon Extraordinaire to Queen Victoria, 1873

“The Beatles have no future in show business, we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups are out; four-piece groups with guitars, particularly, are finished.”
-Decca Records Executive to Brian Epstein, the Beatles manager, 1962

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”
-Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 2007

“No online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”
-Clifford Stoll, astronomer, Newsweek, February 26, 1995

“I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”
-Robert Metcalfe, InfoWorld, 1995

“It remains to be proved how fast the brain is capable of traveling. If it cannot acquire an eight-mile per hour speed, then an auto running at the rate of 80 miles per hour is running without the guidance of the brain, and the many disastrous results are not to be marveled at.”
-The New York Times, March 24, 1920

“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, RCA Executive, 1926

“The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most.”
-IBM Executives to The Xerox Corporation, 1959

“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
-Darryl Zannuck, 20^th Century Fox, 1946

“X-Rays will prove to be a hoax.”
-Lord Kelvin, President of The Royal Society, 1883

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

“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 regarding the steamboat, 1800

“No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam on a train in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free.”
-King William I of Prussia, 1864

“As you may well know, Mr. President, ‘railroad’ carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by ‘engines’ which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.”
-Martin Van Buren, Governor of New York, United States President, 1830

“Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”
-Dionysis Larder, Professor at University College, London, 1823

“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, 1901

“So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value.”
-Committee advising King Ferdinand of Spain regarding a proposal by Christopher Columbus, 1486

“The view that the sun stands motionless at the center of the universe is foolish, philosophically false, utterly heretical…the view that the earth is not the center of the universe and even has a daily rotation is philosophically false, and at least an erroneous belief.”
-Roman Catholic Church, 1616

“If Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is not by some means abridged, it will soon fall into disuse.”
-Philip Hale, Music Critic, 1837

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.”
-Associates of Edwin L. Drake, First businessman to drill for oil, 1859

“The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it…knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient.”
-Dr. Alfred Velpeau, surgeon, 1839

“We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.”
-Simon Newcomb, astronomer, 1888

“The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.”
-Albert A. Michelson, physicist, 1894

What can’t YOU do today?