Joke: Bad predictions

Famous predictions by 'experts':

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

"There will never be a bigger plane built"
- A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a
twin engine plane that carried ten people.

"Ours has been the first, and doubtless to be the last, to
visit this profitless locality"
- Lt Joseph Ives after visiting the Grand Canyon in 1861.

"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.

"We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way
out"
- Decca executive, 1962, after turning down the Beatles.

"It will be years--not in my time--before a woman will
become Prime Minister"
- Margaret Thatcher, 1974.

"With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the
Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice
of the US market"
- Business Week, August 2, 1968.

"Computers may weigh no more than 15 tons"
- Popular Mechanics, 1949.

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

"This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously
considered as a means of communication"
- Western Union memo, 1876.

"No imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message
sent to nobody in particular?"
- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urging
investment in the radio in the 1920's.

"Who wants to hear actors talk?"
- HM Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his
face and not Gary Cooper"
- Gary Cooper, after turning down the lead role in Gone With
The Wind.

"We don't need you. You haven't got through college yet"
- Hewlett Packard excuse to Steve Jobs, who founded Apple
Computers instead.

"I think there's a world market for about five computers"
- Thomas J Watson, chairman of the board of IBM.

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

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

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

"No matter what happens, the US Navy is not going to be
caught napping"
- US Secretary of Navy, December 4, 1941.

"While theoretically and technically television may be
feasible, commercially and financially it is an
impossibility"
- Lee DeForest, inventor.

"Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are
impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax"
- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, English scientist, 1899.