PREDICTIONS

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Bailey
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PREDICTIONS

Postby Bailey » Wed Aug 08, 2007 8:49 pm

I thought ya'll might enjoy all of them, and geezer can prove everyone of them true.

"EXPERTS" TELL IT LIKE THEY THOUGHT IT WAS AND OTHER EXERCISES IN DISCOURAGEMENT

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all
future scientific advances." -- Dr. Lee DeForest,
"Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."

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

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power
of the atom." -- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in
Physics, 1923

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

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

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this
country and talked with the best people, and I can
assure you that data processing is a fad that won't
last out the year." -- The editor in charge of
business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what is it good for?" -- Engineer at the
Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968,
commenting on the microchip.

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

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.

"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.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in
order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be
feasible," -- A Yale University manage ment
professor in response to Fred Smith's paper
proposing reliable overnight delivery service.
(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"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."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market
research reports say America likes crispy cookies,
not soft and chewy cookies like you make," --
Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs.
Fields' Cookies.

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

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible," --
Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the
experiment. The literature was full of examples
that said you can't do this," - - Spencer Silver on
the work that led to the unique adhesives for
3-M "Post-It" Notepads .

"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.

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

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

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

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

"I don't know what use any one could find for a
machine that would make copies of documents. It
certainly couldn't be a feasible business by
itself." -- the head of IBM, refusing to back the
idea, forcing the inventor to found Xerox.

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

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever
be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane
surgeon," -- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British
surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen
Victoria 1873.

And last but not least...

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

mark still-no-hovercars Bailey

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gailr
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Postby gailr » Wed Aug 08, 2007 11:46 pm

So much for science and technology.

"Common sense is the accumulation of prejudice and ignorance at the age of eighteen!" - Albert Einstein


Don't forget humanity's other favorite area of prognostication: DOOM!

"aaaaaagggh..." - Joseph of Arimathea


Politics is always festooned with a bunting of wild, inflated and inflammatory predictions. The US is digging in for another siege of "Vote for me or die in a terrorist attack!"

"Dewey Defeats Truman!"

Bailey
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Postby Bailey » Thu Aug 09, 2007 9:23 am

Apparently it was just more grist for the political and religion mill, I wish I hadn't posted something that was something I thought was amusing.

mark chump-again Bailey

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Perry
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Postby Perry » Thu Aug 09, 2007 10:53 am

"Everything that can be invented has been invented,"
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of
Patents, 1899.
Very amusing, but apparently false. If only Charles H. Duell had lived long enough to challenge his maligners to a duel.
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. Lately it hasn't been working."
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sluggo
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Postby sluggo » Thu Aug 09, 2007 1:44 pm

"Everything that can be invented has been invented,"
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of
Patents, 1899.
Very amusing, but apparently false. If only Charles H. Duell had lived long enough to challenge his maligners to a duel.
Yeah, that seems quite a reach for anyone.

Lee DeForest's quote sounds quite authentic though. The man's career skidded by on fumes of fortune. He never grokked his own tube invention, but he did prevail at milking partial inspiration to the last drop, including that self-syled father figure myth.

To be fair, he did make some contributions and accurately predicted the microwave oven and a form of multimedia transmission (1952), but here's another of his pooh-poohs:

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility." (1926)

Most inspiring above is Fred Smith, the FedEx guy. Thanks Bailey- no regrets here.
Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots! Knife no one, fink!

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gailr
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Postby gailr » Thu Aug 09, 2007 7:12 pm

I quite enjoyed your list, Bailey. It's an amusing look at visionaries v. the status quo. Not all visionaries are benign; they're just more interested in doing than talking. Not all critics are hacks; they're just critical. Both are present in all fields, and sometimes their interaction changes everything.

"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." just one of the versions of a quote attributed to Carl Sagan

-gailr

Bailey
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Postby Bailey » Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:22 am

One thing I'm very familiar with is discouragement. If one gets a great idea, someone will come up with a wet blanket. Often even the best ideas have fallen away due to that someone's opinion. I'm glad that at least some of these ideas made it past the poo poohers. I shudder to think of all the good ideas lost to such negativity.


mark has-had-a-few-ideas Bailey

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Bailey
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Postby Bailey » Fri Aug 10, 2007 9:16 am

I was reading somewhere about experts and imperts. Experts have the fancy degrees from big colleges, the Imperts [possibly from impertenance] have no formal training in their chosen field, a classic example of this is the Wright Brothers who were experts at bicycles, but not aerodynamics [big words for a chimp of very little brane]. The experts are of course the poo-poohers, those dispensing discouragement with a ladle. it is job security afterall to force others to leave inventing to those August officials sitting in their comfy corner offices with piled higher and deeper behind their names.
here is the definition of impert from an expert's point of view
The word is "impert." An expert is one who has had sufficient experience to know what he is talking about. An impert is one who is sufficiently impertinent to think he knows without experience. . . . http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... -3,00.html
Forgetting that every novel idea came from imperts.

mark just-impertenant Bailey

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Postby sluggo » Fri Aug 10, 2007 10:33 am

--or imp for short. :P

I'd be in that camp, though whether an expie is always necessarily a poohie I'd think depends on perception and what a Philadelphian (native: "Fluffyan") would call "attytood".

T'wouldn't be impertinent to import impert into the SWOTD. Wunnaful word.
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Postby gailr » Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:09 am

Neckties have no corner on nay-saying. I've watched a few peer-review sessions where the rank and file were ... mmm ... rank about filing their co-worker's innovative suggestions well away from management consideration.

In my experience, any idea which requires someone else to do more work with less resources, or to make changes, meets with enthusiastic approval. Ideas which require one's own self to do more with less, or to make changes, are resisted. Neither collar color nor benefits nor feasibility really affect this human reaction. :lol:

-gailr

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Postby sluggo » Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:14 am

Neckties have no corner on nay-saying.
'nother words, nevermind the nattering nabobs of negativism, but laud the light lessons of alliteration :lol:
Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots! Knife no one, fink!


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