

Inventions they said would never work - jflowers45
http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/science/strange-but-true/item/invention_failure_never_work_disaster

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coglethorpe
I am tired of all this thing called science.... We have spent millions in that
sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped.

\- Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, 1861

With the Intelligent Design debate, one could see this quote coming from a
representative in this century.

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coglethorpe
The Internet will catastrophically collapse in 1996.’ \- Robert Metcalfe,
internet inventor

Perhaps he was talking about the Eternal September?

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stcredzero
Yes. The Internet of yore collapsed in a singularity caused by the excessive
concentration of cluelessness. We are all presently living inside this event
horizon.

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hernan7
Well, Popular Mechanics was technically right. I am writing this on a computer
that weighs no more than 1.5 tons. Quite a bit less in fact.

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zepolen
Lord Kelvin should probably have kept his mouth shut.

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ajross
Almost all of this stuff is taken out of context. Almost all of them are
statements about immediate practicality, not predictions of the future. When
Kelvin said that, there wasn't even a hint of an engine that could actually
power an airplane. He was basically right: in the middle of the 19th century,
the Wright brothers would have failed to produce an airplane.

Likewise the Western Union quote about the telephone. The devices demonstrated
in 1878 really were primitive, and competed very poorly with telegrams for
rapid communication.

But yeah, it's all funny.

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evgen
Agreed. When they were doing the re-creation of the Wright Flyer for its
anniversary flight recently I was quite taken by just how primitive the engine
was and how much mass there was just to get a few HP. The advancement in
engine power to weight ratios over the next forty years is absolutely amazing
if you consider how slowly things have moved for the previous hundred years.

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technoguyrob
___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 F. Zanuck, Head of 20th Century-Fox, 1946.

How I wish you were right, my dear Darryl.

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PieSquared
Oh, but he was right! People prefer plastic boxes now. Plywood isn't nearly as
fashionable.

More seriously, though, I'm pretty sure I know people who did 'get bored' of
TV, so it's probably more of a personal choice...

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pavelludiq
Yeah, i was bored with it, but only after years of brain melting. If you watch
TV for 6+ hours a day for 6 years you will get bored eventually. The numbers
are approximate, but close in my case, i don't know how i survived 6 years of
cartoon network. And its nice to see that Einstein was wrong for something,
makes him more human.

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technoguyrob
Many things make Einstein more human. You should hear the story about his
first wife, Mileva Maric. Quite a sad ordeal.

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mojuba
Where is the infamous "640KB ought to be enough..."?

I'd also add Edison rejecting alternating current for powering cities,
although can't find explicit quotes about it.

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DenisM
This has someting to do with there being no record of him (Bill Gates) ever
saying that: <http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484>

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ConradHex
I hate to say it, but this sort of reminds me of the comments here when
someone proudly posts their brand new website.

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mynameishere
_The machine gun is a much overrated weapon; two per battalion is more than
sufficient._

If you're talking heavy machine guns, and non-mechanized battalions, then this
is probably about right.

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oz
Now you know why Haig is called "The Butcher of the Somme." IIRC, the fool( a
Field Marshall at that) ordered thousands to their death at the hands of just
2 German machine guns. 20,000 British soldiers died that day, a record for he
Brits. Poor bastards...

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qwph
Thanks for posting this. I've been trying to track down that quote about rail
travel and asphyxia (by Dr. Dionysus Lardner) for _ages_...

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mojuba
The way we suck at predicting the future is terrifying and even kind of
insulting to humankind.

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qwph
I don't know - there's probably an equally large number of predictions which
turned out to be right. They're just not mentioned on this list.

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mojuba
Ok, but that doesn't make us good predictors. It is especially frustrating to
see renowned people being actually so narrow-minded in some respects.

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qwph
Yeah, I'd agree - but making predictions is a notoriously tricky business.

Any statement about the future (which is, by definition, uncertain) has some
percentage chance of looking absurd in retrospect - and it's a lot harder to
make a correct prediction than a wrong one.

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mojuba
_making predictions is a notoriously tricky business_

Was it too tricky for a physicist like Lord Kelvin, the founder of
Thermodynamics, to see that birds are heavier than air?

Was it too tricky for Edison to see that direct current loses the battle at
long distances (because of resistance issues)?

How about Einstein rejecting the possibility of using nuclear power 10 years
before he started working on just that?

Aren't these examples of narrow-mindedness of these people, who otherwise
invented great stuff?

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qwph
(I'm not really disagreeing with you, but) you have the benefit of hindsight.

Admittedly, I haven't invented any great stuff, but if I were to claim that
it'll never be possible for a human being to travel at greater than light
speed, am I going to look narrow-minded in _n_ years time? (where _n_ =10,
100, 1000)

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mojuba
In physics, it is always smarter to predict possibilities, as opposed to
impossibilities ;)

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paul9290
This puts a huge smile on a guy who invented something brand new and either
hears awesome or WTF? I work for those who say awesome and to the WTFs I will
now send them this article :)

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tx
A lot of misquotes there or things taken out of context, I wanted to pick one
or two but then just gave up.

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edw519
My personal favorite:

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

\- Charles H. Duell, U.S. Commissioner of Patents, in 1899.

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run4yourlives
That's a misquote.

[http://everything2.com/e2node/Everything%2520that%2520can%25...](http://everything2.com/e2node/Everything%2520that%2520can%2520be%2520invented%2520has%2520been%2520invented)

