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December 31, 2009 (925 words)

A Partial History Of Some Very Bad Predictions
From The 1800’s To December 31, 2009 – (Part One)

by Art Kunkin

For this last issue of 2009, I originally planned to write a column about my personal resolutions for 2010. However, I finally decided it would be useful to precede that column with this humorous list of some failed predictions of the past compiled from the Internet. Here is the first part of this list.
§ 1925. End of the World according to Jehovah’s Witnesses
§ 1982. End of the world according to Pat Robertson.
§ “Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.” — Popular Mechanics, March 1949.
§ “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the development of the personal computer in 1977.
§ “Radio has no future.” — Lord Kelvin, Scottish mathematician and physicist, former president of the Royal Society, 1897.
§ “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.
§ “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.” — T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961. (The first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).
§ “Space travel is bunk.” — Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of the UK, 1957 (two weeks later Sputnik orbited the Earth).
§ “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936.
§ “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.
§ “It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.” — Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1895.
§ “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” — Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1904.
§ “Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous.” — Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, 1939.
§ “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..
§ “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” — H. M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers, 1927.
§ “The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.” -– Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916.
§ “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.
§ “That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.” — Scientific American, Jan. 2 edition, 1909.
§ “The ordinary “horseless carriage” is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.” — Literary Digest, 1899.
§ “It’s a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?” — Rutherford B. Hayes, U.S. President, after a demonstration of Alexander Bell’s telephone, 1876.
§ “The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most.” — IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 1959.
§ “X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883.
§ “What, 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.
§ “The phonograph has no commercial value at all.” — Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1880s.
§ “Television won’t last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” — Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.
§ “Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” — Dr Dionysys Larder (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London.
§ “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.
(To Be Continued In A Future Issue)
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Art Kunkin is the journalist who founded the alternative weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Free
Press, 1964 to 2009. Art’s book, “Immortality: The Secret Finally Revealed” is available through
his web site www.alchemyrevealed.com. A free introductory report about his own research into
stopping aging, published in the English magazine Fortean Times, can be obtained at
www.immortality-is-possible.com . These Living Longer articles are all archived at his blog
www.artkunkin.com. Contact Art directly by emailing artkunkin@gmail.com).