"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 15 tons."
�--Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
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� "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
--Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
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"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
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"But what ... is it good for?"
�� --Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of�IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
��� --Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
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"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.
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"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.
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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."
--A Yale University management professor in response to Fred�Smith's paper
proposing reliable overnight delivery service.�(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
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�"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."
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"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 her company, Mrs. Fields' Cookies.
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"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
���� --Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
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"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
���� --Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
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"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 or 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.
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"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react.� He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
�� --1921 New York Times editorials about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
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"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training."
--Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.
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"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.
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"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
� --Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
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"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
�� --Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy,� Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
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"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
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"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction"
� --Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
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�"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.
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"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981
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