1. “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” – Decca Recording Company on declining to sign the Beatles, 1962
2. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
3. “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
4. “Railway travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia” – Dr. Dionysius Lardner, 1930
5. “Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognise it as a conspicuous failure.” – Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison’s light bulb, 1880
6. “No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there is one day for free.” – King William I of Prussia, on trains, 1864
7. “X-rays will prove to be a hoax”. – Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883
8. “Reagan doesn’t have the presidential look.” – United Artists executive after rejecting Reagan as lead in the 1964 film in The Best Man
9. “Television won’t last because people will soon be tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” – Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946
10. “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
11. “The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most” IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox
12. “I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating it’s crew and floundering at sea.” – HG Wells, British novelist, in 1901
13. “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, 1800’s
14. “And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam.” – Newsweek, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960’s
15. “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
16. “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
17. “There will never be a bigger plane built.” – A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine place that holds ten people.
