When Geniuses Get It Wrong: Hilarious Missteps from Smart People

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  • 01
    "We will never make a 32 bit operating system."- Bill Gates
  • 02
    "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.
  • 03
    "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.
  • 04
    "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.
  • 05
    "A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere."- New York Times, 1936.
  • 06
    "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." Lord Kelvin, British - mathematician and physicist.
  • 07
    "Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years." -- Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.
  • 08
    "The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine."- Ernest Rutherford.
  • 09
    "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.
  • 10
    "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.
  • 11
    "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -Sir William Preece.
  • 12
    "I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea."- HG Wells, British novelist, in 1901.
  • 13
    "There will never be a bigger plane built." - A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.
  • 14
    "Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever." -Thomas Edison.
  • 15
    "When the Paris Exhibition [of 1878] closes, electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of it." - Oxford professor Erasmus Wilson.
  • 16
    "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.

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