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Consider the following points of view, held by some of history's
best and brightest visionaries. Never underestimate the impossible.
What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held
out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?
 The
Quarterly Review
England,
March 1825
Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt
to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic
Ocean.
Dr.
Dionysus Lardner
Professor
of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy
University
College, London, 1838
[W]hen the Paris Exhibition closes electric light will close
with it and no more will be heard of.
Erasmus
Wilson
Professor
at Oxford University, 1878
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord
Kelvin
British
mathematician and physicist, 1895
Radio has no future.
Lord
Kelvin
British
mathematician and physicist, 1897
That the automobile has practically reached the limit of
its development is suggested by the fact that during the past
year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.
Scientific
American
January
2, 1909
The foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the
absurd length to which vicious specialization will carry scientists
working in thought-tight compartments.
A.W.
Bickerton
Professor
of Physics and Chemistry
Canterbury
College, New Zealand, 1926
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
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
Thomas
Watson
Chairman
of IBM, 1943
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 19,000 vacuum
tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only
1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1.5 tons.
Popular
Mechanics
March,
1949 |
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