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Embarrasing? Well even the experts made errors |
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Errors/mistakes/blunders/miscalculations are human nature .............
On Second Thoughts ......
Even the smartest, most knowledgeable or closest to the matter..
GET IT WRONG sometimes. Here are a few of the biggies
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| 25 |
"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
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| 24 |
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." --- Decca Recording Company on declining to sign the Beatles, 1962 |
| 23 |
"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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| 22 |
"Reagan doesn't have that presidential look." --- United Artists executive after rejecting Reagan as lead man in the 1964 film The Best Man |
| 21 |
"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia." --- Dr. Dionysius Lardiner, 1830 |
| 20 |
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
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| 19 |
"X-rays will prove to be a hoax." --- Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883
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| 18 |
"Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure." -- Henry Morton, President of the Stevens Institute of Technology on Edison's light bulb, 1880
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| 17 |
"The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad." --- The President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903 |
| 16 |
"Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
--- Darryl Zantuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946
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| 15 |
"No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free." --- King William I of Prussia on trains, 1864
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| 14 |
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." --- Ken Olson, President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), in a talk given to a 1977 World Future Society meeting in Boston
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| 13 |
"If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one." --- W.C. Heuper, National Cancer Institute, 1954
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| 12 |
"No, it will make war impossible." --- Hiram Maxim, inventor of the machine gun, in response to the question "Will this gun not make war more terrible ?" from Havelock Ellis, an English scientist, 1893
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| 11 |
"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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| 10 |
"There will never be a bigger plane built." --- A Boing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people
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| 09 |
"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, when told of Robert Fulton's steamboat, 1800s
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| 08 |
"The idea that cavalry will be replaced by these iron coaches is absurd. It is little short of treasonous." --- Comment of Aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Haig, at tank demonstration, 1916 |
| 07 |
"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
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| 06 |
"The most potential market for copying machine is 5000 at most.--- IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 1959
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| 05 |
"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." --- Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878
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| 04 |
"It'll be gone by June." --- Variety Magazine on Rock n' Roll, 1955
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| 03 |
"And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam." --- Newsweek, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s
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| 02 |
"When the Paris Exhibition (of 1878) closes, electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of." --- Oxford Professor Erasmus Wilson
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| 01 |
"A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere." --- New York Times, 1936
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